


Beyond the Pale

by CynaraM



Series: Friendship is Unnecessary [6]
Category: Johannes Cabal - Jonathan L. Howard
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Drama, Gen, Humor, Humour, Occult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2016-02-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 07:26:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 25,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5325653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynaraM/pseuds/CynaraM
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The (possibly penultimate) story of the unlikely friendship between Leonie Barrow and Johannes Cabal, in which they get caught.</p><p>Rating upgraded to 'teen' due to some rather gross zombie descriptions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Leonie Barrow stood outside the headquarters of the Dee Society, hoping the door wouldn't open. She didn't want to go in there. She sweated under her cleaner's coverall.

However: if she was turned away, she would make a different plan and try again. There was only one reason she was trying to get in, and it would not have been considered a good reason by most. The Dee Society had Johannes Cabal, and Leonie was here to get him back again.

She put her head down and tried to look bored instead of so nervous she was ready to dance out of her skin.

***

_Earlier that evening_  
He considered his choices for the night. Black? No, too severe. Grey was almost right, but… the brown. The brown would do nicely. Travelling had left things rumpled, and the fabric of the brown had more or less recovered. Would he wear the matching vest, or go with the subtle stripe instead? His stomach reminded him that he was hungry, again. He sighed. What would he do about breakfast?

 _Earlier than that_  
She dressed carefully as well, but with much more thought. It was fun, she thought, doing something as normal as dressing for tea with a young man. This dress, of course, the blue arabesque pattern. She could pretend the shoes picked out one of the colours, and really, they almost did. Hair…? Down, she decided. Informal and feminine. There wasn’t supposed to be a wind today. Now, makeup.

 _Yet earlier_  
He dressed without thinking about it. Linen, carefully brushed suit. His mind was on the day ahead.

He wasn’t nervous. He never was. Terrified, occasionally, but not nervous. Today was the beginning of the end of a threat that had hung over him - them - for months, and he was confident the risk was justifiable. He looked unseeingly at the green hills outside his house as he tied his cravat.

 _Earliest_  
Wake in the dark. What woke him? Was there something there? Check the wards. Check the locks. Listen. Listen again. He slept in a scratchy robe woven from dream-wool; if anything natural had tried to reach him, it would be deep asleep by now, but there were things that did not, could not sleep, and the robe would be useless against them. He must find or make something better. His stomach growled. Useless mortal frame, so vulnerable to cold, heat, hunger, thirst, knives, bullets. Today was the beginning of the end of a threat that had hung over him for months, and he was sure the risk was acceptable. He finished checking his defences and reached for a tin opener.

***

Dappled sun shone on the china, a soft breeze stirred her hair, and Leonie and the young man chatted of nothing much. They were seated at a little table on a terrace; the people around them were having a similarly lovely time. For once, the families enjoyed each other, the elderly couples held hands, and the young lovers darted looks full of promise over the steaming tea and elegant little sandwiches. The light pooled on the silverware like honey, and the honey curled up in its jar. Leonie laughed at something her friend said, almost inhaling her tea by accident. It was all terribly pleasant until the messenger arrived.

He didn’t look like a messenger. He looked like a tradesman. Leonie wondered why a plumber in a work overall was on the terrace. The part of her brain she had difficulty shutting down these days noticed as his eyes swept the tables, and he glanced down periodically at something in his hand. She felt a sudden impulse to hide. She smiled at Robbie and bent down as if to get something from her handbag; bad table manners, no doubt, but she had the oddest feeling…. When she arose, the man stood by the table.

He was a short man. His overall was marked with grease and bagged at the knees. His face was flat and hard. Robbie cleared his throat. The newcomer ignored him. “Miss Lay’nie Barrow?"

“Yes.” No point in denying that in her current company.

He thrust an envelope with grubby edges at her. The stiff cream stationary was familiar, as was the emphatic black ink. She took it. The situation had started to make a sort of sense, although it was no clearer.

The envelope didn't have a postage stamp or cancellation mark. Cabal's letters usually acquired several as they bounced between post offices and delivery services, but it was his stationary and his hand. The flap bore a small digit, 3, also written by Cabal. The man stumped away between the tables.

Robbie was looking at her expectantly. "It isn't your birthday?"

She forced a smile. "No, just some paperwork dad's lawyer wanted me to take to him tonight." It didn't look much like legal paperwork, but it was the best she could come up with. And better, it gave her a reason to leave town. She glanced at her watch. "I'm terribly sorry, Robbie, but I lost track of the time. I'd better be going."

“Is something bothering you, Leonie? I hope nothing’s wrong."

“No, just something tiresome. I might have to leave town for a few days. I’ll write as soon as I’m free. Thank you so much for today, Robbie." She kissed him on the cheek and left.

Outside the hotel doors she saw a scrap of paper, stiff cream stationary, on the pavement. She was surprised and a little amused to find a precise drawing of herself, full-face and profile. It had done its job for the messenger, and he had discarded it. She guessed whose fine-nibbed pen had produced the sketch: it was delicately drawn, but it was more like a zoological diagram than a portrait. He’d gone to a great deal of fuss for some reason; what was wrong with the mails? She’d open the letter when she was home.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leonie dreams; Leonie enters the Dee Society.

A schoolgirl rummaged through her satchel. How had she forgotten the examination? How had she missed the class for the entire term? She did have notes here somewhere, but the satchel was stuffed full and it was spilling and the hallway was crowded with a blur of students and she was going to be late...

"Miss Barrow.' Cabal was there, sharply distinct. Did she even have the room number.... "Miss Barrow. Pay attention.” His throat worked as he swallowed. "You're too young. Stop it."

Well, I am still in school.' But she knew that wasn’t right. It had been years, except in... "What are you doing in my dreams, Cabal?"

He ignored her question. "You should be about twenty-six. See to it."

"Go boil your head. It really is you, isn't it.” They stood in the corridor, Leonie not quite able to shake off the anxiety of the dream, and Cabal staring at her until he was elbowed by a hurrying student.

He grimaced. “Find us a place to talk.”

Leonie led them to a classroom, empty except for maps and history texts. “Why are you wearing a master’s robe?”

Cabal frowned at his garb until it resolved into his customary suit. “It’s your fault. I’m having to resist your dream’s attempts to incorporate me.”

Leonie sat at a student’s desk. Cabal gravitated towards the master’s chair but thought better of it and seated himself near Leonie. He tapped a chewed pencil on the desk. “Where are you? My intermediary should have reached you two days ago.” His tone was accusatory.

“The day before yesterday! And you didn’t give me much to go on. ‘Prevented from leaving Dee Society Headquarters, extract me immediately’ and an address. I’ve been preparing.”

He sighed and straightened his frock coat to reassure himself it was still there. “I wrote that note as a safety measure before I left, so it was necessarily short on detail. Delay won't help. You need to plan well but quickly. Accept that you will need to improvise.” Cabal hadn’t noticed he was changing again. His suit was quietly acclimatising itself to the drab jacket and tie uniform of Leonie’s school. And was he becoming younger? "I don't want to spend any longer here... there... than I have to," he said.

“Are they… are they being very cruel?” Leonie couldn’t keep the worry out of her voice. Her own captivity by the Dee Society had, no doubt, been tame by Cabal’s standards, but the dreams still brought her awake shuddering and retching in the night. And he was a necromancer; it was odd they hadn’t killed him on sight. She had to assume they had something dreadful planned.

He waved the question aside as beneath consideration. Infuriating man. She rolled her eyes. At least it went with her schoolgirl braid. As for the rejuvenating necromancer, his wrists and neck had gone bony and coltish, and his hair brushed the collar of his shirt and waved. Distracted from her irritation and worry, Leonie tried not to stare as he backslid into an unguessed adolescence. It was like watching an eagle revert to a scraggly chick.

Unaware of his transformation, Cabal continued. “Listen closely. It will be difficult to remember the details after you awake. I’m imprisoned on the second level below ground, in the western part of the substructure. I don’t recommend trying the entrance to the north: better to go in through the front door, on the west.”

“What is that way like?”

“I couldn’t say. I tried the north door.”

Naturally. “What were you doing there?”

“I don’t propose to exhaust myself hanging about in your untidy subconscious all night.” He sneered, a spot appearing on his nose. God, he was an intolerable youth. The rudeness that was almost acceptable from Cabal was outrageous on a boy of sixteen.

She felt older; she put a hand to her hair. She had lost the braid, and she was a little taller than Cabal. He noticed at the same moment, took a comparative glance at himself, cursed profoundly in at least two languages, and focussed himself back into an irritable necromancer nearing thirty years of age.

“Don’t dawdle; I wouldn’t have contacted you if I didn’t think you could succeed. But be careful. Arm yourself, and leave a letter for your father.”

“Yes, my boy."

He had been about to continue his instructions, but he paused. "Why do you call me that sometimes? I am no boy. I am older than you are."

She raised an eyebrow at him meaningfully, and he scowled at her reference to his recent lapse, but she didn’t really know the answer to that question. Where had that little endearment come from? It cut him down to size, perhaps, but it was distinctly affectionate. She sidestepped the question. "I don't propose to exhaust myself explaining interpersonal interactions to you, Cabal. See you shortly."  
She smiled as the dream faded, but as she came awake to cotton sheets and down pillows, she wondered; if Cabal's dream-appearance was under his control, he might actually be a mess. She had to go.

***

Her research had been useful. The headquarters was in a renovated manor house on the outskirts of a town not far from London. Some time spent at the bus station and at a teahouse down the road suggested that three types of people took the route out to the house: people in a discreet, understated uniform that looked vaguely military; motorcycle runners with messages; cleaners and tradesmen. Presumably the top brass had private transport of some kind. Cleaners and trike runners were the obvious options. The courier option was more dashing, but aside from not owning a motorcycle, that uniform would be out of place once she was past the front desk.

For a mercy, they employed a cheap cleaning contracting company with high turnover; she looked up their London office and was hired as Mary Brown. She got a cleaning coverall, a card, and a token on a piece of cord. She would be paid at the end of the week. She wasn’t to sleep or drink on the job or have anything to do with the young men wherever she was sent.

She didn’t care where they sent her. She was going to turn up at the Dee Society headquarters tonight and leave with a necromancer tucked under her arm. Her bravado lasted until she approached the front door.

She sweated under her coverall at the admission desk, the broad carved door before her. The portico was glassed in to provide a dramatic vestibule for the screening of visitors and staff. It seemed a bit grand for the cleaning staff, but it was the only entrance she had seen; she wouldn’t have known about Cabal’s north door if he hadn’t told her. There was a rushing in her ears and she was lightheaded.

There was a young man behind the desk. He was bright-eyed and polite and examined her card and her token closely. “You’re early. The shift doesn’t start until midnight." Every spy novel she had ever read said that fear was a dead giveaway; the best and simplest disguise was boredom. The problem was, she reflected, that she wasn't bored, she was sodding terrified. She could keep her breathing slow and keep her eyes from darting to the door and the young man's holstered pistol, but she couldn't repress the clammy sweat on her brow or the pounding of her heart. She wasn’t sure her legs would stay under her if she tried to run.

“It’s m’first day,” Leonie mumbled, leaning on her country accent as hard as she could. “Wasn’t sure ah could find the place.” She was very early; it was about ten. She didn't want to be here. The Dee Society was a black hole. Within its walls, the laws of the land did not apply. She reminded herself that this time she was prepared; she was armed, though much good it would do her against a building of witchfinders, and she had left a letter for her father, much good it would do him.

“Well. Welcome. Check in at the facilities department in room 107. They’ll see you fitted out.” He nodded her through. Her stomach heaved with loathing, but she mumbled her thanks, put a hand on the cold wrought-iron handle, and pulled.

She let the door drift closed behind her; she stood in the atrium. When she looked up, she nearly gasped. The ceiling was an expanse of glittering black; during the day, the light must pour in through the tiny panes of glass. There was a small but beautiful fountain in the centre with a sculpture of St. George and the dragon. The water played over the dragon's sinuous coils in sheets and rivulets, and George was poised above it with a spear, ready to strike down its gaping throat. The floor was paved in green tile with a glassy, watery glaze, punctuated with white tiles here and there. Living vines threw tendrils up wrought-iron arches.

On the walls, capsules sped through clear channels bearing messages from one part of the building to another. Electric-white globes glowed in the grand wrought-iron beams and arches; the steady light showed hallways leading from the room in three directions. The manor house had been gutted and rebuilt extensively. There must have been additions and, as Cabal had indicated, a substructure.

The room wasn’t empty, even at ten p.m. Uniformed people walked through the halls and spoke quietly in little knots with cups of tea. The atrium seemed a popular place for overnight workers to meet and refresh themselves by the fountain. If Leonie didn’t stop gawping, she would attract attention.

At either end of the atrium, anchoring the space around the fountain, stood two elaborate wrought-iron cages fronted by shining brass gates; lifts. Well, she had to go down. She walked towards the near one and prayed she wasn’t supposed to take a less ostentatious service stair instead. The twisted iron looked like it could withstand the building falling upon it. The gates were massive things: squared brass bars the size of Leonie’s wrist that criss-crossed from a central lock. The lock had no keyhole, but a little slot, about the size of a… oh.

Leonie asked herself, for the hundredth time today, if Cabal had said he was at the east or the west end of the structure. She had raced to write the dream down, but it had slipped away as she wrote. Perhaps it was the south end. She had better make a good decision. East or west? Praying to some experimental deity that cared about her and about a necromancer, she pushed her token into the slot. The brass bars scissored open to allow her through. She retrieved her token using the cord and stepped inside.

It was the second level down, she remembered that for certain. The gyroscopes hummed to full capacity and the buttons lit. Oh god. The lift buttons made no sense at all. There was a grid of twenty-five. Each bore a symbol but not a letter or number, and they all required a pass coin or key. Her stomach sank. What was she to do now? How could she find Cabal’s cell?

He had said he was on the second level down. Focus. Stay flexible. What if the ground floor were the ostentatiously starred button at the centre? Then the second level would be either to its right or below. Only one of those had a slot for a pass-token; the other had a round hole that might have been for a key. Try it.

The lift doors scissored closed with an oiled susurrus of metal on metal and there was a little dip as the gyroscope took the weight of the car. It sank into the ground, carrying Leonie below the ferns and vines, below the tiles, into the under structure of the Dee Society.


	3. Chapter3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Leonie enlists help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is entirely the fault of All_I_Need, who gave me plot bunnies. I wasn't going to do this, really.

She had found a bucket and sponge in a closet, and she carried them for camouflage. This section seemed to be administrative offices, closed for the night now.

Leonie ducked into a quiet hallway and wiped hair back from her sweaty forehead. She was thirsty and tired. She had been searching the complex, dodging away from unseen walkers - guards, other cleaners, mad stenographers hard at work at two-twenty in the morning, she didn’t know. She had stayed ahead of them, carrying her satchel and a bucket that got heavier every hour. These footsteps were louder, she thought. She turned the next corner and fetched up short. It was a dead end. She knelt down just past the bend, pulled the sponge out of the bucket, wrung it out quietly, and started scrubbing.

The steps came closer, measured. They were loud - hard soles, nice shoes perhaps. The walker wasn’t in any hurry. A night patrol, perhaps. Or… could it be Cabal, having sprung himself somehow? It would be like him to chase her down in a corner of his prison. No. It could be a guard. Dee Society guards might notice that it was odd for a charwoman to have a satchel with her, or that she was off on her own. They might notice it was too dim for proper cleaning. He might know the usual staff. The steps came closer. Damn.

She had a plan if she was discovered. She hoped she would not have to use it. She especially hoped she did not have to use the backup plan. Cabal was in danger here, and she would do a great deal to save him, but she did not want blood on her hands. But the thought of being imprisoned again invoked a fear beyond the rational, and she would not let that happen. If she thought Cabal had anyone else to do this….

The steps measured the hallway with the sound of inevitability. Thirty feet. Twenty. Ten. Six. She saw them - brown shoes, men's, quite stylish. She had to look up. He was staring at her.

She chilled all over. There was no reason for anyone to look at a cleaner that way. He was not just resting his eyes on her as he planned how many biscuits he would have at tea, not even ogling - no, he was stiff with shock or anger. He didn’t wear the uniform - a civilian, then, or maybe just an, an operative or a contractor or a consultant…. Could she run? Should she attack him?

She had not hesitated for more than a second, though the adrenaline in her blood had stretched it out unbearably. He spoke - not loudly, but it carried in the still air of the corridor.

“I’m sorry,” he began, his voice irresolute. “I”m sorry, but you look just like… I’m sorry to have frightened you.” He let out a breath and bowed slightly, continuing down the the corridor past her and, it seemed, away. Had she been wrong about it being a dead end? She could not relax until he was gone, could not even take her eyes from him. He was tall with loose brown hair, rather spare around the jaw. His ash-brown suit looked soft and pettable.

He passed her, and she stifled a sigh of relief. Two paces away, three. His steps slowed. He turned and looked at her once more. He had noticed something. What? She forced a smile. “Is there something I can help you with, sir?” She smoothed her hair and tried to dimple. The man stopped dead at the sound of her voice. Really, he was behaving very strangely, and she should probably push him over and run now, but somehow she didn’t, even when he slowly crouched down to her level, looking into her eyes. His were thickly lashed and blue; deep eyes a girl could get lost in. It was a pleasant, mobile face, actually rather attractive.. But he was breathing oddly - short inward breaths through nose and mouth. He sank down until he sat on the hallway floor, getting his lovely suit all dusty. He never took his eyes from hers. “You’re Leonie Barrow? Oh no."

***

The man started to laugh, technically.

Leonie was glad she was already kneeling. She knew that face. She had seen it before. There had been the smell of wet bramble roses on the night air and a devil in the garden. Cabal had been there, wounded by murderous pixies or whatever… and he had said something about cheap psychology.

The man in the brown suit was speaking. “Poor damned Johannes. What did he ever do to deserve that? ...well. But poor damned…." He winced and stopped himself. "Do you have any idea? No, of course you couldn't." He passed a hand over his face, trying to wipe away the half-hysterical laughter. "Let’s just say someone, somewhere, has a dreadful sense of humour."

“Johannes. You’re…. Horst? Horst Cabal?"

It seemed to call him back to himself. He stood up. "I’m sorry. I’ve been terribly rude. Yes, Horst Cabal, at your service.” He extended his hand and met her eyes. She slowly put her hand into his, and he helped her to her feet, watching her as if she might startle and run away.

Somehow her soapy, damp hand was neatly turned palm-down and bowed over before she really noticed what was going on. He lowered her hand carefully, too, didn’t just drop it when he was done with it. The little look he sent her as he straightened sent a pleasant zing of sensation… hmm. And she suspected he wasn’t even trying. Poor Johannes, indeed.

"We never quite met somehow, at the carnival. I did meet your father. How is he?"

Leonie blinked. "He's well, thank you."

“Look. Would you mind talking with me briefly? I understand you must be, be angry at him, at me, and it’s very justifiable.” Horst’s light baritone stumbled over the words. "I don't mean to defend his actions or mine. I would be happy to answer any questions you might have, and I really, really would like to know a few things from you.”

She spoke without quite meaning to. "You're here to break him out?"

Horst’s face became forbidding, austere. He looked strikingly like Cabal. "Why would I do a thing like that?"

***

Two minutes later Horst sat across from her. He had escorted her to an unmarked office door along an adjoining corridor, carrying her bucket and sponges. He seemed very sure the halls ahead were clear. He held her chair and then seated himself.

“Would you like to begin? Ladies first.”

Leonie almost laughed. Horst Cabal had a look of his brother - it was obvious now that she knew. The shape of the brows, the angle of the chin.... Though Horst had a boldly turned jaw, thick eyelashes, and an elegantly formed mouth.... But the polished courtesies, the pleasant self-assurance in all his actions…. She was staring, and she should stop. He was staring, too, though, and it wasn’t entirely pleasant. She hadn't meant to ask about it, but the question tumbled out of her mouth. “How did you know me? I don’t think we’ve ever met. You were at the carnival. My dad told me, but I never saw you."

“And I never saw you, but….” It was deuced awkward to tell a young woman you recognised her by her scent. A bit personal to bring up in the first ten minutes of acquaintance. But a part-truth would work…. “your voice. I never saw your face, but I heard your voice."

“When?"

“At the last.” He had hoped they wouldn’t reach this topic so quickly. "In Johannes’ office on the train. I was hidden.” His next words came rushing out. “I am sorry, I am so, very sorry. I should have intervened.' Everything he said was miserably short of the mark. "I hoped…. I so badly wished he would let you go. I thought he would. If he had really tried to pull the trigger, I would have stopped him, I swear, but I waited too long and you signed, and…. Well.” Horst’s eyes were fixed on the table, and his words came slowly. "I know what he is. I tried not to, but I know. And I hope you’ll tell me what happened to you after, really, but I want to know first…” He met her eyes. "Are you here to kill him?"

Leonie had been wondering how would someone stop a half-pulled trigger, but the question jolted her out of the train of thought. “No! No."

He relaxed a little. “Good. I’m glad. I wouldn’t blame you if you were, but I’m glad.” She left him time to elaborate, but he didn’t, he just stared at her.

“My turn. Why are you looking at me like that?"

Horst immediately looked at the table. “You look like someone."

“You mean I look like her.” She looked him in the eye and didn’t say anything else. She just watched Horst Cabal sit very, very still. He hardly seemed to breathe.

“How…. I’m sure we don’t mean the same person."

“I think we do. I wondered. I couldn’t really tell. Am… am I very like her?"

“I don’t see how you could…. Did you research it, look him up somehow? No, never mind. You asked." He sighed. "You are the living image,’ he said quietly. "It’s uncanny. It must have cored my little brother when you showed up.” Horst thought about it for a moment. "God. We weren’t really on speaking terms by Penlow, or he might have told me. But more likely not. What did he do when he saw you?"

She had never thought about it before. "He stared. He was odd, but he’s Cabal. Johannes Cabal,' she corrected herself. “It didn’t really stand out."

Horst smiled wryly. “I could almost feel sorry for him, if it wasn’t for everything else. But then, there’s everything else."

“Mister Cabal.”

He winced. “Call me Horst, please. I’ve sort of taken against the family name."

“Call me Leonie, please."

“Leonie, then.” He smiled. Horst was _very_ handsome.

“I’m not saying your brother is a good man, or even a pleasant one. But I think….” She chewed on her lip. She knew how naive this might sound to Johannes’ brother, someone who had known him intimately during that year and who had probably been bitterly disappointed by him more than once. And she was not entirely easy in her own mind about Cabal’s moral compass, despite her real and growing attachment to the man. “I think he’s changed. For the better."

Horst looked dubious. “How do you know? For that matter, how do you know him now? I can’t imagine you sought him out for the sheer joie de vivre of it. Most people who meet him wish to un-meet him right away. I’ve seen people run. Into traffic."

“I can’t say I invited him over for tea, but… look, it’s a long story.” Full of improbable incidents and unlikely situations, she thought. “I would love to tell you - or better yet, watch Johannes tell you - but not here and not now."

Horst was nodding before she finished talking. “So… if you aren’t here to kill him, why are you here?"

“I’m... trying to help him?” She realised how unlikely it was, on the face of it. An uncomfortable pause opened up as Horst tried to square this with everything he knew of Leonie Barrow and Johannes Cabal.

An idea suddenly occurred to Horst. It didn’t make sense, but it didn’t not make sense, either. “I’m not sure how to ask this, Leonie, but upon what terms to do you know Johannes?”

She snorted. “Sometimes I ask myself the same thing. But. We’re friends, I think.” She reflected. "When he’s not being appalling."

Horst’s eyebrows soared at the assertion. “You’ve found a time, then. I congratulate you."

“You’re cynical about him. But forgive me, I’m sure you have your reasons."

“I may have my reasons? And I hate to be the one to disillusion you, but someone should tell you before you endanger yourself more. He must be using you.’ Horst’s bitterness was tempered with grief. "I don’t think he can help it, really, but don’t delude yourself that you matter to him. Only one thing matters to Johannes: his work. The rest of us are tools and resources, like his gun or his soul."

“You have known him longer, and I don’t dispute what you’re saying, exactly; but I’ve known him more recently. I think he’s my friend, but I know I owe him. My life, a couple of times, and maybe my sanity."

“And he wasn’t responsible for endangering them in the first place?”

Leonie laughed. “Well, not entirely responsible. We've had our ups and downs, but we always seem to stick somehow."

Horst's expression darkened further. “Really? Or do you just forgive him over and over?"

"I don't put up with that tone from you or from your brother, Mr. Cabal."

Horst winced. "I’m sorry. Could you believe I'm considered the charming one? He has done things, Miss Barrow, that I hope you can’t imagine."

“I’ve seen a few things myself."

He nodded, looking at her. “I’m beginning to understand that. But he has done things…"

“He has his soul back. It’s changed him."

A silence fell. Horst sucked a breath in. The hope actually hurt. He pushed it away. “I doubt that. And anyway, I would be more excited if I hadn't known him before he hawked it away in the first place. And so what if he got it back? He did it by extorting yours."

“Yes. But that’s… not exactly water under the bridge, but so much has happened since then.” Horst clearly did not understand what she had just said. Could he not know…? “He gave it back."

Horst had been slumping back, but he was suddenly sitting forward over the table. She must have blinked.

“He what?"

"A letter arrived, about a day later. Evening post. Miss Leonie Barrow, Penlow on Thurse. Many thanks, surplus to requirements, destroyed paperwork rather than entrusting it to the mail. Johannes Cabal, Esq. I never found out how he did it. I went from furious to,’ she shrugged, “furious and confused."

She had the feeling that relatively few people saw Horst Cabal gobsmacked. “Are you… You're absolutely sure? Sorry, sorry.” He waved a hand in the air. “Forget I asked. But he gave it back?” Horst continued, muttering as if to himself. "He couldn’t have found someone else. But he wouldn't have had enough forms, even with… what did he do?"

“I don’t know. I’ve never asked him about the details."

"And what about Nea Winshaw?"

“Yes, her as well. I knew. We would pass each other in the street and we would know, just know. Maybe that’s why she took Maisie and moved away. We ran across each other all the time, and it was painful to remember, especially for her."

He closed his eyes and drew a shaking breath. Leonie stared at him. He looked so like Cabal, but - every movement, every word broadcast their differences. He looked up at her with a rueful smile of apology for his emotion, and she rearranged her stare to an expression of polite sympathy from borderline ogling.

“You have to understand, Miss Barrow. My brother died to me that night. And vice versa. When I found out earlier this year that he had survived, I was sure he had just… driven another bargain. Sold something else, maybe something worse. Called on god knows what powers to get his excuse for a life back. But you’re telling me he….” Horst shook his head, not able to say it. She could see he wanted to believe it, wanted it terribly, but couldn’t quite manage it.

“Will you help me break your brother out?"

Horst hesitated. When he had come across Leonie he had been walking and thinking about family. He had loved his family, always. Even Johannes, who had made a career out of making that difficult.

He had been thinking about it since he learned they had somehow captured Johannes. There was a justice of sorts to his imprisonment, given Horst’s years in the Druin crypt. He could walk away and leave him here, to death or to years of imprisonment. But how, his conscience niggled, would his brother cope with the boredom, the time stolen from his work? The cruelty of the passing years. The habits of an older brother weren’t easily forgotten. Even when Cabal had been at his worst one desperate look would put Horst right back to childhood: protecting his naive, prickly younger sibling from the worst school and life had to offer.

But at least Johannes wouldn’t be destroying anyone from a cell. And the Dee Society seemed like it might actually manage to contain him. But Horst, despite the vagaries of the last ten or twelve years, had always had a good heart. He weakened. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea."

“It’s what I’m here to do. You say you’re so wrought up with guilt over the carnival? Then never mind your brother, help me.”

She was determined. And what if she was right? And could he say no to Leonie Barrow? “All right. I’ll help."

She let out a sigh. “Thank you. Do you know where he is?"

“Yes, I do."

“Thank goodness. I’ve no clue at all."

“You were getting close, but there is a guard."

“I have a plan for the guard." Her hand strayed to the bag at her side.

“I have a better one."

“You’re awfully sure of yourself. And you say you weren’t planning to break him out?"

“Not exactly planning. But not exactly... not planning either."

"Horst…what was he like before he sold his soul?"

Horst’s expression soured. "Ask him about the Druin family crypt some time."

Leonie thought she might not want to, judging by Horst’s look. But she thought she should. “So, which way is he?"

“That way," said Horst, and set out in the opposite direction.

"Horst?"

He looked over his shoulder as he walked away. “You don’t think he’d leave without his damned bag, do you?”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A happy little family reunion.

Horst led them through the corridors, slowing or hurrying in response to cues Leonie couldn’t detect. “How long have you been here?” she asked.

“About a week. I’m consulting. I learned enough with Johannes to get by.' He smoothed over any little gaps in his knowledge by mesmerising his clients. He was doing that a great deal, lately, which troubled him. No particular instance seemed all that bad, of course, but he didn’t want it to become a habit. He was afraid it was becoming a habit. He made himself a promise on the spot: he would not mesmerise Leonie Barrow. Johannes… he wouldn’t kill Johannes. “It’s just ahead.”

Leonie listened at the corner and glanced around it. “The lights are on. Should they be?"

“Most likely. The labs and archives seem almost as busy by night as by day.” Not that he had seen them by day, but it sounded good. They had been active whenever he had seen them.

He had gone to examine his brother’s things when he arrived. He loathed the sight of the Gladstone bag, though it was not the same version his brother had carried the year of the carnival. That one had, no doubt, been scorched, dissolved, saturated with unmentionable substances, or abandoned in the extremest emergency. Or perhaps it had just been scuffed beyond Johannes’ standards of neatness.

Black lacquer and silver skull: the sword-stick was unchanged. A long time ago he had thought that accessory was so unlike his brother, that streak of drama or dandyism. Now he realised the sword-stick was solely practical; Johannes was uneasy unless he could run someone through the heart at a moment’s notice. Horst wanted to crush the silver skull in his hand and wad it the stick into a ball of splinters and bent steel. But what would that change? He had thanked the lab assistant and left. He hadn’t found the second file he suspected they had on Johannes. He should have looked for a file on Leonie, too.

“The real question,’ Horst continued, "is how many people are in there. I could probably persuade one person to let me take Johannes’ things, but a group….” He had never tested the limits of his mesmeric powers; one person was easy. Perhaps he could do two? A roomful? A regiment? He hadn’t experimented. The stronghold of the most competent anti-supernatural paramilitary organization he had ever encountered did not seem like the place to start.

It sounded like there were at least several people. One person was talking, but he could hear little shifts of feet and brushes of fabric that suggested a group. Leonie was already on the job. Bucket in hand, she slumped a little and trudged around the corner, past the glass-and-iron conservatory wall of the labs. Then she slapped a pocket as if checking for an item, grunted, and walked back.

“It’s unlocked, but there are eight people gathered around one of the benches examining something. They looked important. They were wearing uniforms with gold braid."

Horst wrinkled his brow. “I have some pull around here, but I can’t evict eight ranking officers on a whim. Any ideas that won’t bring the whole building down on our heads?”

Leonie mentally listed her assets. One handsome man. A coverall. A satchel with various items she didn’t want to use, and several items that didn’t seem to have an immediate application. A bucket filled with grey water. One sponge. “One idea.' Horst nodded, waiting to hear what was next. “Stay here.” And she was gone.

Horst stood with his back to the wall and turned his senses toward whatever Leonie was doing. He heard her tired footsteps down the hallway and the shift in the echo as she entered the room. For a few minutes the lecturing continued uninterrupted, now paired with the quiet squish and slosh of scrubbing. She wasn’t seriously planning to scrub them out of the room, was she?

And then a noisy clang, and a long hiss of water splashing and spreading over a tile floor. A smell of wet dust and the lecture stuttered to a stop. There were sounds of rapid shuffling as the listeners tried to save their shoes. “So sorry, gents and ladies. Let me get that with my sponge… oh, now that’s a mess, I’m sorry. Here…."

And an eye-watering wave of ammonia hit Horst’s nostrils, wiping out everything else. “Oh, thought that was the soap. You’d better start rinsing that out, or it’ll leave holes in that jacket. Let me…” And a sound of thin glass bursting over the floor. “Oh, watch out, dearie, it’s all over the floor there. Are those bottle things expensive? Just give me a hand and I’ll help…” and another, harsher sound of crashing glass, and now the reek of ammonia was mingled with formaldehyde.

A chorus of voices had arisen around Leonie’s. “Now, girl, get out of it and….” “Sacked! Dismissed before dawn!” “Oh god, watch the…” and a metal clang punctuated the hubbub and a masculine voice rose above the rest like a soloist in a choir. “Rats! The cage…. Oh, god, rats everywhere!” And beneath it Leonie kept up a cheerful stream of helpful advice and apologies. “Aren’t I daft as a brush, dear, now if you just step around the glass, that little rat won’t do you the least harm….” Horst had to move smartly to avoid the departing wave of officers, now reeking of ammonia and speckled with glass. Leonie had also gotten in a helpful swipe or two with some reeking rag.

The smells were so strong Horst could hardly breathe - and then he remembered he didn’t really have to. Horst found himself grinning back at Leonie. The victor was surveying her field of triumph. The lab was a holy mess; the floor swamped in wash water, ammonia, formaldehyde, assorted pickled specimens and a wall-to-wall carpet of glittering fragments. Leonie’s boots crunched over the sparkling shards. “So, where is it?"

****

Horst went to persuade the guard. If Cabal had offered to “persuade" the guard, she would have interpreted it as a plan to beat the guard into unconsciousness - paired with an uncharacteristic joke. But could Horst Cabal use charm and a brief history as a hired consultant to gain entry into a necromancer’s jail cell? His only precaution had been to ask her to wait around the corner while he “had a quick word with the man.”

Leonie’s brain told her that this was going to be the second time a member of the Cabal family got her thrown into a prison cell. Horst had got her to Cabal’s door, if nothing else, but she would have to take it from here if he failed.

“Leonie,” came a soft call. She risked a glance around the corner. Horst was standing with a young enlisted man, his hand on the man’s shoulder. The man was smiling vaguely at Horst, who held out a ring of keys. “Pop inside while I finish discussing our mission with my friend MacDougall here.” Private MacDougall nodded agreeably, still smiling. It was very odd.

But there was no time for delay. She heard voices in the distance. Leonie unbarred the door and sorted out which keys fit which locks - there was even an odd key-like thing that didn’t have a lock, but had to be pressed to a plate to release an invisible fastening holding the door in place. “I’ll be after you in a minute,’ Horst said. Leonie was glad to escape the hallway for Cabal’s windowless cell.

The cell was similar to her own former dungeon inasmuch as it was well-secured, windowless, square, and electrically lit. There, the comparisons petered out. It was a small, clean room with a narrow bed made up with pillow and linens, a pair of white-painted benches, and a white table fixed to the tiled floor. A paperback book lay face-down on the tile, the pages rumpled and bunched. A faint mark on the wall above suggested it had been thrown with great force.

Johannes Cabal sat at the table, at his ease, unmarked, and as firmly cravatted as usual. “Finally."

She slammed the cell door. He looked fine. Bored, even. “ ’Thank heavens’ is more traditional.”

“The heavens have nothing to do with it. And you haven’t got me out yet.”

“You’re lucky I don’t turn around and leave you here. I thought you were being tortured! I thought you were being kept in some pit and threatened with death! I thought they were digging a Cabal-shaped hole out back!"

“Feel free to complain to the management. I plan to. Do you see what they left me to read?’ He indicated the lurid paperback on the floor. "Are these imbeciles paid by the adverb?"

And then Horst walked in.

Johannes’ lips parted and stayed that way. Nothing came out. He lurched to his feet, wavered, and fell to the floor. Horst watched him crumple while Leonie dived to his side. He fell on her heavily, and she struggled to lower him to the floor.

“Vapours, Johannes?” Horst sounded bored.

“For god's sake, he’s not well.” Cabal was conscious now and flailing a little in a futile attempt to get his balance and extricate himself from Leonie’s awkward grasp.

Leonie let him down, now that she was satisfied he wouldn’t crack his head open on the table.

Dignity seriously compromised, Cabal sprawled on the floor and stared up at his brother. “ _Horst_?"

“Yes. I was as surprised as you are.”

“But….”

“Let’s not dwell on the details now, shall we? Up and at ‘em, little brother. Dawn is coming.” Cabal just stared at him, mouth still open. Recalling himself, he pulled himself into a sitting position.

“I can’t. They’ve drugged me. Wise of them, actually. I’m coming out of it, but the physical effects linger."

Horst sighed. "I’ll carry you."

“You had better not. There will be a shift change soon; it may have started already. We had much better wait an hour.” Horst paused. An hour would take him close to sunrise, but Johannes was probably right. He didn’t like the idea of being caught between the night and morning shifts of guards. He nodded.

Things became very quiet in the cell. Leonie waited until things had become awkward enough. “Well, I’m sure you boys have a great deal to discuss, and I’m exhausted. Cabal, I’m stealing your bed for the next hour.” Cabal winced when she lay down on his sheets in her dusty coverall, but he wasn’t going to be using them again anyway.

Cabal composed himself on the floor, so Horst joined him, backs against the wall. Leonie’s breaths slowed, became deep, and eased into sleep. Cabal sighed. " _Was machst du denn hier?_ "

" _Hier in diesem Gebäude - oder hier in deiner Zelle?_ ”

Cabal continued in the same language. “I wouldn’t call it ‘my' cell. I’m not buying it."

"I'm in the building because I thought the Dee Society might know what you were doing."

"And what did you find?"

“I heard you were stealing books, which was no surprise. Guesses about a woman, which I ignored. Something about a rivalry with another necromancer. I am here in this cell only because I lay in a blanket box while you extorted Leonie Barrow’s soul. She asked me to help. So I’m here."

“And why did you want to know about me? You certainly intended to wash your hands of me, back then."

Horst smiled grimly. “Maybe I wanted to find out if I'd tried to kill the right brother."

"That's not funny."

"You're hardly a judge.' Johannes didn't reply, and Horst felt ashamed of his pettiness. "So. Leonie Barrow."

A silence formed and stretched. "That is not a question."

“The hell it isn't. What in God's name is she doing with you? Look, Johannes. God knows you’ve never taken my advice before. But somehow you have managed to convince Leonie Barrow you are marginally human. I admit, I didn’t think you had it in you. _Versuch es nicht zu versauen, indem du du selbst bist, ja?_ " There was a harsh, sneering edge to his voice.

" 'Managed' suggests I have been misrepresenting myself. I think Miss Barrow and I understand each other fairly well."

Horst considered that. There was, he admitted privately, something implausible in the idea of Johannes beguiling Leonie with sweet words and affectionate gestures. The implications were confusing, and he really wasn’t finished being furious, so he changed the subject. "What happened after that sunrise? What did you do?"

Bitter, silent sobbing by the rails, Cabal thought, while ashes sifted down through the dawn light. But that was not what Horst wanted to know.

To Horst's surprise, Johannes did not preen. "Satan did not count the contracts,' he stated simply. "The one you stole,' he said without rancour, "was beside the point, in the end. He wanted the two Penlow women. When he started to get rangy about terms, I threatened to dump the box into the lava. I sold him the contracts in the box for my life and soul. Those two contracts were not in the box. Happily ever after, _et cetera_.' He actually said ' _et cetera_.' “Your turn. Didn't you kill yourself because you couldn't bring yourself to look me? If that was a trick, I think I’m entitled to feel offended."

“I did kill myself. Imagine my surprise when I woke up in the crypt some weeks later.” The night of the new moon he had awoken among splintered wood and old rags.

“The Druin crypt? Really.” Horst could see his brother running through the implications, filing the information away. "What have you been doing since?”

"I’ve been around. Travelling.” At first he had travelled to get away from Johannes, from England. To get away from the mess of the carnival. Then he had travelled to find a place to settle down, live some kind of life for a while, until he decided whether he should try to die again.

Money would never really be a problem for a vampire; his needs were so few, and his wants were easily supplied. He thought about finding a city in Europe, maybe even in one of the Germanies, and having a bit of a rest. Somewhere he could feed without straining the local population, make a few friends, go dancing, talk with someone who wasn’t Johannes. He never found the right city. He suspected the right city wasn’t out there. He changed the subject again. “Leonie Barrow."

“That is still not a question."

“Have you ever seen such a resemblance?’ Cabal shook his head, looking elsewhere. Horst pressed. “I’m surprised you can bear it.”

There was a short silence. To his surprise, Johannes broke it. “Miss Barrow is not easily mistaken for anyone else, physical resemblance aside,” he said stiffly. “I rarely think of it now.”

“You like her.”

Cabal’s head flew up, his eyes searching Horst’s face for a hint of mockery, of salacious amusement - but he found none. His intent regard relaxed, and he shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. We have been obliged to assist each other a few times.” Cabal shrugged again.

Horst’s elder-brother experience sensed something elaborate about Johannes’ shrugs. "You don't want me to believe you care about her, do you?"

Once, Cabal would have replied that it was of no interest to him what Horst believed. "You insist on believing I am perpetrating some kind of fraud, to what end I cannot imagine. She is competent, and she plays an interesting, if inept, game of chess.”

Horst turned his head to look directly at Johannes. Could he be sincere? “Does Frank Barrow know you’ve become…. chess partners?” And perhaps he let a tiny bit of salacious mockery into that one.

“ _Das geht dich einen Scheißdreck an_ ”.

“ _Schön, dann sag's mir halt nicht_. Don't wake Leonie. But she isn't here because she's obliged. This place scares her; you know why better than I, I suppose. And she came when you asked. Try not to screw it up, Johannes," he repeated, gentle in spite of himself.

" _Du solltest Schnulzenromane schreiben_." But the sarcasm was automatic. Horst could read him well enough to see a trace of perplexity, though whether it was about how he could avoid screwing it up, why he should care, or even what 'it' was, who could tell.

“Leonie is…"

“You are on a first name basis already, I see.” Horst had probably bowed over her hand, too.

“And I see you aren’t. The weather is so much nicer in this century, Johannes, you really should try it."

“It is a professional relationship."

"I know your profession too well to believe that.” But Horst was distracted before he could decide whether to pursue the debate. Leonie’s breathing had changed; He had been aware of it as he was aware of Johannes’ measured breath and the slow, easy exhalations of the guard outside the door. He heard their heartbeats, too, though he tried not to. Leonie’s had accelerated, and there was a tension through her sleeping body. She made a quiet, strained noise in her throat. Horst was about to go through the chore of standing at a glacial human pace when he noticed that Johannes was already there.

“Miss Barrow.” He prodded her shoulder. “Miss Barrow, you are having another nightmare. We dealt with all that in the spring,” he chastised.

Leonie woke hard, eyes flying open, face creased with fear or disgust. She breathed hard as she got her bearings.

She sat up slowly and swallowed before she spoke. “Yes, Cabal. I can’t imagine why I’m having terrible dreams about being imprisoned by the Dee Society. How foolish.’ She realised she had a death grip on Cabal's wrist. She released him after a moment. “Thank you for waking me.”

Cabal rotated the joint ostentatiously, but he hadn’t shaken her off. Or mocked her. Horst thawed a degree towards his brother.

"Why are you still dreaming?” He might have been asking why she hadn’t been brushing her teeth.

"This may surprise you, Cabal, but it's possible that even an exorcism might not relieve all of a person's bad dreams."

"It wasn't an exorcism."

Horst cleared his throat. "Might I ask...?"

“Oh, well, yes. I was in a bit of a state…"

“Your mind was being devoured by a devil."

“Hush, I’m telling this story. I was in a bad way, I admit, and Cabal turned up on my doorstep and nagged, bullied, and shamed me into accepting his help. You begged a little too, didn’t you?"

Johannes sneered profoundly. Horst blinked. Considering the provocation, that was practically affectionate.

“…and I’m very grateful. I admit it: I needed your help desperately, and I was being very stupid. All right?"

Her provoking expression was alight with amusement and affection. Horst caught his breath at it. He looked at his brother: the raised eyebrow, the faint flush that suggested Johannes was actually engaged in the conversation, not just counting the minutes until he could go back to his lab. It struck him that, for whatever reason, Johannes acted as if Leonie was a person. She was, of course, but it had been years since his brother had treated anyone as if they had more intelligence, sensitivity, and claim to basic human decency than he would accord a lab rat.

Cabal snorted.

"We found a devil living in my head. Or maybe a demon, I admit I never was entirely clear about that."

"It was not the most pressing issue,” supplemented Cabal.

"It... It's rather a long story, actually, but in the end, it took over my body, was drugged into unconsciousness by a very friendly devil, and then Cabal pulled it out by burning a magical book that allowed it to take someone over.'

Cabal groaned softly at this mangling of the tale of his brilliant manipulation of infernal forces. "You can read him your monograph some other time, Cabal. That will have to do for now. And I agreed to help him back. To make a long story short, we wound up on this mountain surrounded by ghasts…."

“Oh very good, leave out who attracted their attention in the first place…."

Horst settled back to hear the story. He could wonder at the whimsical qualities of fate some other time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to All_I_Need, who has given Cabal his German back.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’d say he’s mad?"
> 
> “Oh, yes. That’s by far the kindest explanation, I think. A danger to himself and others."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks for your patience over the holiday hiatus; further, continued, and repeated thanks to All_I_Need for translation and for listening to my complaints about this pastime I love. 
> 
> "Kurt, I never knew a blacksmith who was in love with his anvil."

Cabal paced around the cell; the drug was wearing off. Horst watched his progress out of the corner of his eye, tensing when Cabal wobbled.

Leonie leaned over. “You were going to walk away and leave him imprisoned? Very convincing.’ She raised her voice. "Cabal, you can't wear your suit."

"No."

"I'm glad you agree. Here..."

"No, I will not wear whatever degrading ensemble you have brought as a disguise.’ He stopped by the table, his fingertips brushing the top. "Disguises are for amateurs. Look at him,' he said, glaring at Horst, debonair in his brown flannel suit. "He fits in."

"Oh, but she's right,' said Horst, delight kindling in his eyes. "I am a civilian consultant. They know my face. You look like a mortician on a housecall. Even if they don't recognise you, they'll throw you in a cell while they figure out how you got here."

"What about a Dee Society uniform, then? Surely that would be best."

"Yes it would,' agreed Leonie. "And if we come across a few, I'll help you pick one out. In the meantime, you'll just have to be flexible.'

"I might have been able to get or forge a uniform before I came," she continued, looking at Horst, "but time was of the essence - apparently - and a wise man told me not to overplan." She held up another work overall, this one crumpled. "There you go. It ought to fit over everything but the tailcoat."

Cabal made it fit over the tailcoat. Leonie had rarely seen him in anything but a suit. He always looked so young and pale, so normal it screamed at her. "You're going to have to blend in, Cabal. Do you think you can handle it?"

"Of course I can damned well handle it. I was breaking into the Vatican Museum while you were in pigtails."

Horst interjected. “To be fair, we did get caught. If I hadn't convinced them it was a student prank…." Cabal turned his back on Horst and went through the contents of his Gladstone bag. Horst dropped the subject. "Johannes, it’s time to go. Sunrise is coming."

“And after that scene in the lab, they may be looking for me,” admitted Leonie.

Cabal rose from the bag. “We must stay.'

Horst's eyebrows rushed together; Leonie made a wry face, and she started to speak. "No, hear me out. What does the Dee Society do? It hunts monsters, occultists, and necromancers. Have you forgotten that we are the target of a dangerous necromancer, Miss Barrow? I believe the Dee Society would have obtained information about Twiccian that we can use to our advantage."

Leonie answered slowly. “Cabal, I didn't come here to assist you in some daring caper. I came here to get you out, to get you to safety. Besides, we haven’t heard anything from Twiccian in months. Don’t you think he’s forgotten about us?"

“Never.' Cabal leaned across the table. “Never. Remember, I read his notes. He only waits for the right time. In addition to us, I know of three relic hunters, one criminal conspiracy, and two necromancers who crossed his path. All are dead, to the last man. And that is only what I have heard from outside sources; his notes hint at many, many more. He is patient, he is careful, and he is utterly terror-stricken. I am certain that the moment he gave me his lair’s location he began planning my death, and as soon as he realized you were involved, he began planning yours. Leonie, listen to me, we are both in danger, and we need to know what the Dee Society knows."

She couldn’t help being impressed by his seriousness. “If they had anything useful, wouldn’t they have used it?"

“They may not realize what they know, or it may only be useful combined with my information.' He made a frustrated noise in his throat. "It’s not so much that I object to dying as that I refuse to die at the hands of a greasy little maniac like Twiccian."

Horst cleared his throat. “Johannes, if we stay much longer, I will need to sleep."

“What, now?’ Leonie was incredulous. “Walk it off, Horst."

“I can’t.' He looked daggers at his brother. “I won’t be of much use in an hour or so. I’m pushing it as it is."

“We don’t need your help. Miss Barrow and I can take it from here."

“Can you? They captured you, Johannes. This isn’t the usual bunch of robe-wearing dimwits. The Dee Society is intelligent and organised. I don’t know what they have planned for you, but if I were you I would get clear and call myself lucky."

“And risk another attempt to take Twiccian’s file? No. It is safer to press the advantage now."

“I could stop you."

“You’re looking a little pale. I don’t think you will try to whisk us both out of the building without our cooperation. Do you know where the file would be kept?"

Horst threw his hands in the air. Pig-headed, obstinate, mulish little.... “I might know. I suspect they have secret files I’ve never seen. Leonie, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Leave now. I’ll stay on. I’ll find the file tonight, I promise, and bring it to you.”

“No.' Cabal’s voice brooked no debate. "We should not try to leave with dawn approaching. It’s too soon. You said it yourself; you are pushing it."

“Your concern touches me."

“You should hide yourself and rest. Miss Barrow and I will find the file, then come to you."

Horst looked at Leonie, who gave a hesitant nod. Horst groaned, but assented. “There are guest quarters where I can stay tonight. Stay with me until the evening, Johannes. Once the administrative staff leave, find the file and meet me back here. Or better yet, wait until I wake up. I will get you out, I promise."

“You do look pale.” Johannes turned his chin a little to the side and lifted it a degree.

Horst shook his head. He wasn't that desperate yet. Johannes, confused, shot a look from Leonie to Horst. "No!" He certainly wasn't that desperate. Leonie had raised an eyebrow; damn Johannes, anyway. He’d always had the social subtlety of a water buffalo. Horst wanted to tell her himself; well, he didn’t want to tell her at all.

Ten minutes later, they had exited the cell, Horst had said a pleasant farewell to his friend Private MacDougall, and the three of them were walking through the halls. The building was waking up. Additional lights had come on, anticipating the dawn they wouldn’t be able to see from the second sublevel.

Cabal came to a sudden stop. “I will scout."

“You will what?” Horst’s ears and nose gave early warning of anything with a heartbeat. What was Johannes doing?

“Scout. Back shortly.” And he took off, managing a credible version of his normal impatient stride. Horst and Leonie looked at each other. Horst cursed; Leonie shrugged and leaned against the wall to await his return.

***

Cabal edged down the hallway alone. That had worked out as he had hoped. Horst had been reluctant to let him go, but he was also reluctant to describe why it was unnecessary. That cat could not remain in the bag much longer.

Cabal placed himself in his emerging mental map of the facility. He was several hallways away from the main lift, but it was too busy for his purposes in any case. That was a foolish bit of design; it was vulnerable and cumbersome.

A a message capsule hummed through the wall, and another followed it a moment later. Day was coming. That system cut down human traffic between floors, but food, office supplies, garbage, and other materials had to be moved around the structure somehow Human nature being what it was, renovations had circumvented the lifts. A system of dumbwaiters moved freight around. There were safeguards to keep them from being used by humans, but Cabal couldn't believe they were sufficient.

He was right. A very few minutes later, he was on the main floor in a back hallway. Left, right, and left, and he was at a steel-clad door. He took a metal probe from his bag and tapped its metal butt on the surface. He ignored the clanks that reverberated through the hall, surely audible for a great distance; this had to be done. Moving his fingertips across the steel, he tapped the door again. He found the spot he was looking for; he reversed the probe and scratched a tiny x in the metal finish.

He reached towards his bag again. Footsteps. He sighed. He would have to return to accomplish his task, and he had kept Horst and Leonie waiting too long already.

***

Leonie drummed her fingers on the wall and looked up. Horst was pacing the hallway, hands in his pockets, fuming. “So, your brother.’ That still sounded odd, applied to Cabal. "Science would suggest he was a child at one point."

Horst stopped pacing. He made an effort to smile and he joined her, leaning back and looking up at the ceiling. "He was always bright. Like mother. He takes after her, a little. I remember them playing chess - she took no prisoners, even when he was eight, and you should have seen him staring her down. He was odd, which wouldn’t surprise you. Odd man out, but he never seemed to mind.'

“When he got older, father wanted him to go into law. There would have been trouble ahead. Even then, it was almost impossible to make Johannes do something he’d decided against, but he loved father.’ Horst seemed to be speaking to himself. "And then he fell in love."

Horst went quiet, seeing something in his mind’s eye.

Leonie ventured a comment. “He hasn’t told me, really. Just that she drowned."

Horst nodded. “She did."

Silence settled again. Horst cleared his throat. "After… I’m… You know him. You even like him and, believe me, that’s a feat rarely attempted.’ He fought for the right words. "When she died, something broke inside him." Horst stopped and shook his head. "No, that’s not quite right. That’s just something people say. Leonie, something switched _on_ inside him, as if it had been waiting. And he’s been possessed by it ever since."

“You don’t mean literally."

“No.’ Horst pushed his hair back, and it accented his cheekbones. He really was excessively handsome. He seemed to have forgotten the situation in his contemplation of his brother. "I used to think Johannes’ madness took him from us. Now I wonder if it didn’t reveal the real man."

“You’d say he’s mad?"

“Oh, yes. That’s by far the kindest explanation, I think. A danger to himself and others."

Another silence fell.

“I don’t even know her name."

“I haven't heard him say it since the funeral. Well, it was more of a....” a howl, he had been about to say, but he let the sentence hang. Leonie let it.

“It’s terribly sad."

“I don’t know what’s sadder. What happened then, or how he’s lived since. After the carnival, I didn’t want to see it anymore, couldn’t bear it. What he’d done to you, to Nea Winshaw, to me. I decided I was better off out of it. So I left, and I thought it was forever. But I was wrong. Here I am." He trailed off. “You’re fond of him, aren’t you?"

“Fond is a strong word. But I suppose, when I don’t want to strike that smug expression off his face."

“Ah. That expression has also been a feature since childhood.' Leonie smiled, picturing it, and started to reply, but Horst raised a hand. "Sssh."

His focus had gone far away, and Leonie waited, didn’t even breathe. “There’s a group coming. Two groups, one from here,’ he pointed down the hall, “and one from…” he pointed in the direction Cabal had gone. They would be boxed in in a moment, if they weren’t already. "We have to move now, fast. I don’t know how he didn’t hear them. I don’t think they have him, though. I don’t hear his voice."

“You have remarkable hearing.' Horst didn’t seem to hear that. He was good at avoiding personal questions. Leonie continued. “We’ll have to hope our cover hasn’t been blown. I’ll start scrubbing something, and you walk past them. When they’ve reached the turn, we’ll follow them at a distance until we find a spot we can hide and let the other group pass us, too."

Horst considered the idea. “You don’t think they’ll be looking for you by now?”

“This particular group may not be looking for me. It’s not perfect, but what’s your plan?"

Horst wanted to pick her up and whisk her past them so fast they wouldn’t notice anything but a breeze. But he would certainly have to feed then, or he would be visibly unwell. It was awkward, being housed in a base with vampire-hunters. He had left to feed several times, but he needed to evade the security precautions each time, so he spaced it out as much as he could. As a result, he was underfed. “Your plan won’t work if they see you close up. Your hair isn’t even covered, for heaven’s sake.”

“I know. But it’s the best I’ve got right now. They’re coming."

She could hear them now, too. One voice rose above the footsteps: a woman’s voice. “Cabal and Barrow may still be in the area.’ Horst and Leonie stared at each other, aghast. The voice drew closer. “They will likely be together. We want them alive, but don’t do anything stupid."

Horst and Leonie fled into a doorway together. Leonie’s plan would not do. Damn. Horst whispered in her ear. “I can hear Johannes now; he’s on the other side of them. Leonie, I’m going to pick you up and carry you. Keep your arms tucked in."

“You’re going to…” He tucked one arm behind her, the way she would cradle a two-year-old, and picked her up easily. She had only an instant to realise the strength behind the action when a wind whipped through her hair and the ceiling lights spun around her. Her inner ear was still churning when she got a glimpse of Cabal’s expression moving from suspicion to surprise and the spinning and wind started again.

When it stopped a few seconds later, they were in a hallway she hadn’t seen before.

Horst set Leonie and Johannes down; then he kept going and sat on the floor, hard.

Cabal hit him with his hat. " _Du Idiot. Was hast du denn gedacht, was wir ohne dich tun würden? Däumchen drehen und jammern 'Ach wenn Horst doch nur hier wäre'?_ Can you stand?"

“Just about.” Horst was grey, but he rose to his feet, supporting himself on the furniture and then Cabal’s arm. Leonie decided to help Horst now and extract everything she wanted to know from the Cabal brothers immediately after. Using torture, if necessary.

This area was being renovated: rugs and end tables were stacked in the hall, and there was a strong smell of paint. She led the brothers to a room that was partially furnished, on the theory that it was less likely to be disturbed than the ones that were still being sanded and painted. “Are you sure you won’t be found during the day?"

Horst nodded, but didn’t spend the energy to reply.

The room held a bed, a night-table, several lamps lined up on the floor, and stacks of pillows and bedding. Cabal half-dropped his brother onto the bare mattress, then examined the walls. “No real light - the window is a fake. You should be safe, unless you’re found."

“Stay here. Hide. It’s safe' Horst’s voice was weak. “I’ll be better tonight.”

“Not by much, you won't. If we aren’t here when you wake, feed and get out. If we can find an opportunity to leave, we’ll take it. Do you know where the house is? Good, find me there.' Horst’s gaze slid from Cabal. "Please, Horst.” He turned and left the room.

Horst struggled to stay awake for another moment. Leonie was still by the bed. “Leonie.’ She turned to him and bent down to catch his whisper. “Be careful. Johannes is up to something, I think.” And he let himself drop into deep, black sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "And?" Leonie was waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the part of the story where Cabal turned into the hero, or at least less of a villain.

Johannes and Leonie sat side by side and watched the body of Horst Cabal. He wondered if she could tell Horst wasn’t breathing.

"Cabal."

"Yes?"

"Your brother is…?” The incomplete sentence dangled.

"My brother is what? Handsome? Charming? So I’ve been told.” He focussed on removing a particle of something trapped under the nail of his left middle finger.

"You're irritating when you're obtuse. What is wrong with Horst?"

He evaded again. "One of my favourite subjects. Would you like to start with his character flaws? I have a list somewhere.” He was talking too much.

"Cabal!"

"We have more pressing concerns than Horst's indisposition."

"We always have 'more pressing concerns' when you're avoiding a subject. I should make you a sign to wear around your neck. ‘Shut up, I have pressing concerns.’"

“If I thought it would work I would wear two.”

Leonie half-smiled, but she wasn’t going to be distracted. “Really, Cabal. After all that, you have to tell me."

“I don’t.' His voice was cool. He wasn't teasing her or playing their game of banter and irritation. “I don’t have to tell you anything, especially not about Horst.” Though he didn’t care if she knew. Of course.

“He told me to ask you about the Druin crypt. He carried me across the complex in about a second and a half. It's a fair question.”

At the mention of the crypt, something hot fired in him. “My god, but you love to pry. It isn’t enough for you to pester me with your constant personal questions?"

She flushed. If he didn’t want to answer a question, he generally ignored it. Then she pretended she hadn't asked. Alternatively, he asked with poisoned courtesy if she could resist the lure of gossip for long enough to fend off that night gaunt: please, thank you, if she didn’t mind the exertion.

What had gotten into Cabal? He had always been irritable, of course, but they had been on easy terms for some time. She was curious about him. Of course she was, and she couldn’t help it: but ordinarily she knew how to avoid the dangerous subjects. “Well.' She swallowed and smiled brightly at nothing in particular. “I seem to have touched a nerve."

A fraught silence fell. Leonie tried not to feel hurt and failed. Cabal tried not to feel like a bastard. He succeeded, but only by a narrow margin. He did feel a nagging glow of… ah. Yes. This happened around Leonie sometimes. Shame.

His mouth formed words he had not meant to say. “Horst is dead."

Leonie hesitantly stretched out a hand to Horst’s wrist. What did Cabal mean? His expression was closed, even for him.

Horst’s skin was cold as the brass of the bedstead. She recoiled from the touch of his flesh and looked back at Cabal, who was still expressionless. She tried Horst's forehead, which was every bit as cold as his wrist. She searched for a pulse, for some movement of breath, but Horst seemed indeed to be dead. Hours dead, in fact, not the minutes they had been sitting by him.

She didn't know what she had expected, but this was so much worse. “Cabal, please. Please tell me what is wrong.”

“He is a vampire."

She didn’t say the words: but vampires aren’t real. Vampires are from horror stories, no more real than... Than…. well, she was running out of monsters to put on that list. So. Vampires. She made space for the idea. “That explains quite a lot, really.” Questions pressed against her lips, but she clamped them together, having just recollected that they were in the middle of an argument. If Cabal was so offended, he could stew in his privacy.

Cabal did not miss her expression. He could tell she was hurt, still, and too proud to ask anything else. Why did Leonie's anger always feel like sunlight fading from one's skin? He didn't even like the sun.

He did not think of apologising, even to discard the idea. But he did relent.

"He would tell you it was my fault.’ He rubbed his eyes and searched for words. "I made a miscalculation. It ended with him facing a vampire alone, as night fell."

Leonie's brow creased in sympathy. “Where were you?”

"I was there. Well, there in the graveyard. I was at the top of the stairs of the crypt. When he screamed I locked the door and ran.’ He felt Leonie recoil a fraction of an inch. "I suppose,' he continued resentfully, "if our positions had been reversed, he would have run into the tomb to die gallantly by my side.” Such actions had always come naturally to Horst: never to him.

"And?" Leonie was waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the part of the story where Cabal turned into the hero, or at least less of a villain.

“I kept running until I was in town. I left our inn, abandoned Horst’s luggage at the train station, and crossed several international borders."

“Did you think he was dead?”

Cabal's gaze wavered to the false window. “I suspected he was not. Hence the running."

“Had you sold your soul by then?” She was still waiting for that other shoe.

He raised an eyebrow, but he allowed the question. “No, I had not. My researches were slow and stymied by my lack of power.'

She didn’t have anything to say to that. He changed the subject. "Do you know why vampires are portrayed as vicious, manipulative leeches?"

“No."

"They are. All of them are, except Horst. Believe me, if you had met another, you would agree that a nice imprisonment is the most humane solution. Horst is…. I returned after ten years and, with the promise of research into a cure, I obtained his help in running the carnival.'

“No, slow that down. You ‘returned’?"

“I returned to the crypt in which I had imprisoned him and asked him for a favour, yes.” Cabal didn’t dwell on the details. 'I was inequipped to manage the carnival alone. Over that year, his bloody inexorable decency interfered with my plans several times."

Leonie tried to take it all in. “He helped you, even then. I had been wondering what inspired a grudge of such massive proportions, but now I’m surprised he’s willing to see you at all."

"It was less the vampirism and the imprisonment, and more..." Cabal gestured at Leonie herself. Cabal didn’t tell her about Horst’s final trick on him; the stolen contract, doomed to remain unsigned, that should have guaranteed his death and eternal torment. He had never held a grudge about that.

Cabal rose and bent over Horst, signalling an end to the conversation. He was, Leonie realised, going through Horst’s pockets. “Having a bit of a grave-rob, are you?” Cabal affected not to hear. He pocketed a pass-token similar to, but likely of higher rank than, her own.

They slept, Cabal stretched head-to-toe beside Horst’s cold body: Leonie on a stack of bedding on the floor. Hours later, she arose fatigued and grouchy. The rest had been an endless half-drowse, and her waking thoughts and fitful dreams had blurred into a haze of worry and distaste. She pushed it to the side. She would think about Cabal’s moral blemishes after she was home. She had a job to do now - tuck him under her arm and get him home. Of course, he’d complicated the task with files and secret agendas and whatnot, and it was time to get a few things clear. “I want to get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Fine. But Twiccian’s file is worth a brief delay."

“Yes. A brief one. But only Twiccian’s file, nothing else. No research or rummaging through their library."

“Agreed."

She didn’t like the speed of his assent. Still, speed was the name of the game.

***

They had slipped out of the hallway of guest rooms and used a dumbwaiter to ascend a floor or two. The dumbwaiters were hot and awkward to climb into, but they had the definite virtue of being easily pried open from inside.

They were equally awkward to climb out of, but Cabal didn’t assist her. Leonie remembered something and began to speak. "Robbie….”

Cabal interrupted. “Why would I be interested in your boring lover?"

Leonie relaxed. Back on safe ground. “Why would I only discuss topics of interest to you? Personally, I thought we’d exhausted 'twelve ways to cross-reference my necromancy notes’ and ’the drawbacks of the Dewey Decimal System' as subjects. Anyway, Robert's not my lover. Yet.” She grinned, knowing it would make him uncomfortable, and she was gratified when Cabal winced and made a sound of disgust.

She continued. "He's a very sweet boy. You could learn something."

"I do not aspire to be a sweet boy."

She affected surprise. “Your secret is safe with me. And how do you know he's boring?"

"I notice you aren't denying it." She raised an eyebrow at him. "He rows."

Her brow furrowed. "Hold on, I didn't tell you that."

"I outsourced some research."

And now she really was surprised. "You hired some sleazy investigator to check up on Robbie?’ She was more amused than appalled. "In God's name, why?"

"Security concerns."

She snorted. "I suppose, to you, my main significance would be my ability to lead people to a certain necromancer."

"It was an avenue that had to be explored. As it happens, he does not appear to have any reason for harbouring vengeful feelings towards me, so your tawdry amours are, I am deeply grateful, no concern of mine."

A sharp retort was on the tip of her tongue, but it hinged on Cabal’s own love life. Knowing what she did, she tried to avoid that particular easy inspiration for humour. She replied "It's the shoulders, mostly…. All that rowing….” And she flung a devilish smile in Cabal’s direction which provoked him to a revolted curl of the lip.

The corridors here were wider and more gracious than on the lower levels; the tiles had a translucent quality to them, and the electric light was warm and soft. Some of the office doors had panels of stained glass which depicted items and creatures: a key; a squiggle Cabal recognised; a gun; a flabby-looking blue-green biped on a shore; bafflingly, a monkey.

They passed these doors and took narrower hallways until Cabal stopped them at a single steel-clad door: very much the kind of thing that would have the Society’s secret files hidden behind it. Cabal scanned the surface, found what he was looking for, and turned to Leonie. “This will go faster if you would hold this’ and he produced a stub of something from his pocket,” to this spot here.”

Leonie stepped over and took the item; it was a dull bit of silvery metal, iron at a guess. Now that she was close, she could see a tiny, precise ‘x’ inscribed into the brushed finish of the steel cladding. She moved the stub of metal to the marking only have it slide away, as if it had met a rounded, slippery surface. “A matching magnetic pole?” Cabal nodded, already busy with some other impedimenta near the doorknob. She applied pressure, braced her arm, and forced the tip of the magnet to the marking. She felt rather than heard a tumbler move within the door; the sound should have been satisfying, but it rolled over with a minor-key clunk. Cabal was absorbed with his task.

In the dark on the other side of the door, a soft blue glow flickered and guttered out.

Cabal stood, dusted his trouser-knees, and replaced his tools in the Gladstone. Leonie tried the doorknob. It wouldn’t budge.

“I don’t think you got it, Cabal."

“No, I certainly did."

“It’s still locked.” She wasn’t even mocking him, it was so odd.

“I was not trying to unlock it."

She was filled with suspicion and just a touch of confusion. “So what was that in aid of? Are we hoping Twiccian’s file will slide itself under the door?"

“Oh, that is not the record room, Miss Barrow."

“Then what the flying fornication was all that, Herr Cabal?"

He smiled briefly, evilly. “Wheels within wheels.” And he would not say any more on the subject.

***

The file room, it turned out, was not even on this floor. The silence in the dumbwaiter was chilly.

***

The file room was grand, opening up like a concert hall as they slipped in through the double doors. Whoever designed this place had buckets of money and an eye for design, Leonie thought. It was a great round room that soared to a translucent glass dome. The dome was iron ribs that supported panels of a pearlescent glass that glowed faintly as if lit by the dawn. Leonie did some mental math; even with the sweeping height of it, that could not be natural light, but it was still beautiful.

The room was on three levels. They stood upon broad ring bordered by railings on one side and bookshelves on the other. Above it was a balcony of much the same design. The centre of the room was sunken by a few steps and filled with rows of tall filing cabinets and a ring of worktables. Light glowed not only from the dome but from the underside of the balcony and from rows of small jewelled reading lamps on the desks and the tops of the filing cabinets.

The room was also deserted.

Cabal made a beeline down the steps to a narrower filing cabinet with tiny drawers: the card catalogue. Leonie wandered to the shelves. The books were oddly uniform; they were quartos a foot tall, bound in red leather. She tilted her head to read a spine; it was stamped with an queer symbol, probably Enochian. The title below read "Field Notes: Bristol Office" and then a range of dates. She scanned the rest of the shelf; the adjacent books were also from Bristol, and they were arranged chronologically.

She hesitated before touching it: strange books couldn't be trusted, but the beauty of the room and her curiosity won out, and she tipped the volume from the shelf. It was a bound manuscript: a series of case notes from a Dee Society operative hunting down a malignant hedge witch.

"Ha!" Cabal's faith in the society's reference system had not been disappointed. Leonie glanced back just in time to see Cabal disappear into a row of filing cabinets. One of the lamps winked on, and Leonie heard the smooth scrape of a drawer, then a rustle of paper.

"Do you have it?"

But Cabal never answered. The door to the hallway banged open, and heavy boots clattered from tile onto silencing carpet: a dozen riflemen, led by an imposing figure in a skirted uniform. Her jacket bore service stripes and insignia of rank.

If she had been in the police service, Leonie would have guessed she was division chief, at least. Her thick black hair was collected into a braid. Her face showed a few lines, and one brown hand rested on her holstered revolver.

Oh god. Leonie’s eyes searched the room. There was no retreat. Her empty stomach roiled.

They had certainly been expected here. The Society had been playing with them, waiting for them to attempt Twiccian's file. She was going back to a cell that did not officially exist, from which no lawyer or judge could free her. The book fell from her nerveless hands.

She clenched them into fists. Well, damn it, she wasn't sorry. It was a small flame to warm herself at, but she did her best. And maybe Horst could do something. If his cover was still safe. If he wasn't being carried up to the sunlight right now.

It had only been a second or two since the door opened; the riflemen were still taking positions, the officer striding a few paces into the room.

"Herr Cabal. Miss Barrow." The officer's voice filled the space easily, defeating the sound-deadening floors and walls. "Raise your hands in surrender." She projected the strength and calm of a superb field officer, and she was backed by a bristling array of bayoneted weaponry. Leonie raised her hands. Cabal was hidden by the filing cabinets, but he had not raised his hands, at least not high enough to be visible. At least a moment ago he had been below the lit lamp, but he might have moved.

"Miss Barrow. Please remove your bag from your shoulder and throw it to your right.' Leonie complied, slowly. There was no sign from Cabal.

The officer sighed. "Herr Cabal. I have no doubt you are planning some cunning tactic. If you do not come out immediately, I will send soldiers after you. You and Leonie might easily be harmed in the crossfire, not to mention the mess it would make of our filing room. We have kept you safe so far, but believe me; you are dispensable. We would not miss you one tiny bit." Her tone rang with disgust and sincerity.

Nothing: and then the lamp clicked off. Leonie could see the tension flare in the riflemen's posture, but two seconds later Cabal appeared in the aisle, hands raised. He radiated a bored hauteur; Leonie knew it well; it meant he had no plan whatsoever.

He opened his mouth, but two of the troops were already in motion, sent by a gesture from the officer. He was summarily cuffed, taken by the arms, and propelled out the door. He looked back once at Leonie, and then he was gone.

All but two of the soldiers followed. The pair shouldered their weapons and stepped back to the door.

The officer crossed the floor to the stairs and halted, her hand on the bannister now, not her pistol. "Miss Barrow. Forgive me for not introducing myself earlier. I am Commandant Mary Singh. Will you accompany me to my office for a conversation? It’s overdue."


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What a lovely carrot. And what a big stick you have, commandant Singh."

The commandant stood at the foot of the stairs, calm and alert. Leonie wanted to wipe her damp palms on her overall. "Thank you for the invitation. May I ask about the alternative? If it is an invitation."

"A comfortable cell, while I and others decide what to do with you. A separate cell from Herr Cabal's."

They wanted something from her. They were going to offer her a deal. She supposed it was better to hear it, whatever it was, than to be sent to her room while the adults decided everything. If they thought she could be bought or threatened, they'd get the same reply as their friend Jones. "I'd be delighted, Commandant. Could I trouble you for a cup of tea?"

***

Cabal sat in a small, white room. Captain Leigh sat across the table, conducting an interrogation with his usual judicious mix of death threats and anti-German slurs. Cabal had, as yet, said nothing. He would need to start speaking soon, but he was schooling his thoughts first. It occurred to him that he had been impatient. He shouldn't have involved Leonie.

During his first interrogation, Dale had threatened him with execution, but Cabal made it a policy not to open negotiations until he saw a murder weapon. And even then, there were limits.

Cabal disliked the idea of his death, but it was not unexpected. It was not the worst thing he could imagine, and he knew exactly what he would and would not compromise to stay alive. The moustached man across from him was repeating a question. Cabal’s disregard was so complete it didn't even register as a distraction.

For whatever reason, they had not carried out their threat. But now they had Leonie Barrow. Cabal did not know - and did not wish to learn - how he would reply if they promised Leonie's safety in exchange for something he did not want to give. So: stall for time. Distract. Infuriate.

He was pleased there was about to be an emergency.

The Captain’s flow of invective and threat faltered. Cabal was smiling.

***

Leonie was shown through some familiar corridors and through the atrium, now busy with civilians and militia. Her escort led her through an anteroom furnished with desks and maps and staffed with clerks and secretaries. They passed down a panelled and carpeted corridor that terminated with a desk in front of a door.

The young man behind the desk stood and saluted so rapidly he upset the desk lamp. His salute didn't waver, but his eyes flicked to the lamp and his lips compressed to nothing. His hair was red and feathery where the military cut was long enough. He had freckles over his cheekbones and the back of his neck.

Singh addressed him. "At ease, Nailor. Miss Barrow, Second Lieutenant Nailor is my adjutant. He will be responsible for you while I check in on Herr Cabal.' Nailor quailed visibly, either at the mention of Cabal or the weighty task of taking charge of Leonie. The riflemen took up posts at the door.

"Arrange tea, Nailor. And you don't have to come to attention every time I enter a room. A salute is sufficient."

"Yes, ma'am." Was he actually blushing? And what was all this business with tea? Leonie had fully expected another small stone room designed to be overseen by hidden eyes. This looked like the door to the boss’ office.

"Start without me, Miss Barrow. I may be a few minutes."

Leonie wondered what they were doing with Cabal. Singh's tone hadn't been kind.

"If you'll follow me, Miss.' And then Nailor remembered that Leonie was a sort of prisoner and should probably go first. He froze in mid-pace. "I mean, after you, Miss."

Leonie preceded him into a spacious oak-panelled office with a desk and hard visitors’ chairs. There were armchairs, too, drawn up to the windows over the lawn rather than to the fire at this time of the year. My, this was going to be cosy. Nailor turned to go, but she spoke up. "How long have you been at the Dee Society, Second Lieutenant?"

She could see Nailor wondered if he should be talking to the prisoner, but he had been brought up nicely and couldn't see any harm in the question. Cabal would eat the boy alive.

"This is my second day, Miss. I'm just out of cadets." He turned to switch on a floor lamp, but his elbow caught it and sent it tipping into the mantel. He snatched at it, but it was too late. There was a crunching sound as the lampshade met the brick facing.

"Not your day for lighting fixtures, is it?"

He flushed as he righted the lamp. He was not so terribly young: nineteen, perhaps? But green as the grass.

"Hadn't you better see about that tea? I'm starving." She smiled at him; she couldn't help it. He was relieved to be dismissed.

She sat in one of the chairs and looked out over the long, green lawn down to the row of cypresses that lined the road. The sun gilded the tips of the grass as it sank low in the sky. She must have rested longer than she had thought, or the whole business since had taken longer than she had thought at the time.

She was glad to see the sun again. This was a pleasant spot for tea, if not as pleasant as the terrace where she had seen Robbie last week. Oh, Robbie. He was a lovely boy, but she kept thinking of him as... Well, a lovely boy. A bit like Nailor, actually, with his nice manners and fine-boned face. She loved how lighthearted Robbie was; it had buoyed her up when she was frustrated with school or dad. But he didn't really care about anything. Cabal was right, he was a bit dull.

The thought was depressing and beside the point. She decided to be useful and look over the office. She wouldn't have been left alone if they thought she could find anything useful, but she would look regardless. The few papers on the desk were performance reports on Dee society operatives: interesting, but not immediately relevant. The Commandant rated her own neatly appointed water closet.

The walls held landscape scenes, but a small section between two windows had a framed photograph of a man. He wore a linen suit in the style of the previous century. He had a turban and a full beard, and his hawkish, beautiful face bore a resemblance to the Commander's. Leonie could almost see the uniform on his broad, stiff shoulders.

She was halfway through rifling the bookshelves when she heard something fall outside. She leaped for the chairs, and she was sitting reading a book of memoirs when Nailor arrived, red faced and bearing a tea tray.

Singh had told her to start, and she was hungry and thirsty. She took a sandwich over to the shelves, only to be startled by Singh putting her hat down on an occasional table. She had made no noise at all. Leonie pretended to have been admiring a painting.

"Are you an art lover, Miss Barrow?"

"Oh, in a small way." They both knew she had been snooping, but neither of them had to admit it.

Commander Singh sighed and smoothed her hair, which was tightly braided into a circlet. Leonie wondered if she did it herself; it would be very practical in a fight. “Cabal isn't talking yet. He wouldn't shut up during the first interrogation, so at least this is a change. Tea?"

“Please.” Leonie took one comfortable chair, and the Commandant took another. She had pretty hands, and she managed the teapot and cups gracefully. A steel bangle Leonie hadn’t noticed before chimed lightly against the teapot.

Against her will, Leonie's curiosity was piqued. "What did Cabal talk about in the first interrogation?"

"I couldn't tell you. It wasn't in English. Or German, or any other language we can speak here. Our linguist said it was an Aztec language."

Leonie couldn't leave it there. "And?"

"The silly ass... That is, the Captain in charge of Herr Cabal after his capture actually brought in a specialist from Cambridge, who must have been about a hundred and thirty years old.' Singh rubbed her eyes as if she was fatigued at the memory. "The prisoner immediately switched to English and criticised the professor's grammar. At some length. After the professor left, in an almighty huff I might add, Cabal refused to say anything more. That silly ass of a Captain was at his wits’ end, and so he recommended the prisoner for execution,' Leonie's head snapped up from her teacup, "and so his file crossed my desk for review.'

“I didn’t know about Cabal before his appearance here. He isn't a high-priority target, but we have gathered intel about him. When we discovered him in our own headquarters, I became much more interested. I saw a fair amount about you there, too. And that's why you're here now.’ Her nod indicated the office. Here it came, Leonie thought. The deal.

Singh set down her teacup and turned to face Leonie directly. She folded her hands in her lap, and something of the officer left her voice and posture. She spoke slowly and sincerely.

"I wish to apologise to you, Miss Barrow, officially and personally, for what you suffered at the hands of Witchfinder Jones and his office. His actions were not directed or sanctioned by the Dee Society, and we repudiate them and him.’ Her eyes narrowed, and an echo of command returned to her voice. "If he had not disappeared in the commission of his crimes, I would expect him to be facing a court-martial and very likely a firing squad.'

Leonie felt warm and cold, and the room had narrowed to her and the Commandant. She didn't want to lose her composure in front of the Commandant. Singh continued.

"I don't know what you and Cabal did to him, and frankly, I don't care - except that his trial would have been a salutary lesson for the Society. There are officers, Miss Barrow, who are allowed to operate without real oversight, either through convenience, lack of resources, or because they have dependable ties at high levels. Many of them are good operatives, but any service can harbour the evil or the mad. Jones was both. It was due to our incompetence that you suffered what you did. I am truly sorry."

"I'm not sure what to say." The apology meant something, it truly did. She felt a relief and a lightness. She fought down a desire to clasp Singh's hand in gratitude.

But she had broken in and tried to free Cabal. She was not too overwhelmed to realise that she might be headed right back into another cell. Singh continued, “you needn’t say anything, though I would be happy to hear any statement you want to give, and I would carry it to our command.”

That seemed to be all she had to say. They sipped tea in silence for a while, Leonie trying to compose her thoughts. She should be planning to get herself and Cabal out of this, but she had been thrown off-balance by the Dee Society at every turn. Everything she had seen - the relative decency of their treatment of Cabal, the presence of women among them, this apparently sincere apology from a ranking officer - made her uncertain in her loathing of them. Birds sang evening songs from the cypresses down the lawn.

After a quiet interval, Singh set down her sandwich. “Miss Barrow. May I ask why you came here to assist Cabal? He is not the companion I would have expected a woman like yourself to seek out.”

Leonie narrowed her eyes at the word “companion,” but Singh’s steady regard was free of slyness.

“You’re not the first person to remark on that.’ Leonie wasn’t inclined to have a heart-to-heart with the imposing officer, but might there be a chance here to advocate for Cabal? “Is it possible you are judging him by the actions of other necromancers? You'll know I'm a criminology student. We studied the psychological profiles of necromancers."

“I have been brushing up on that topic."

"Then you know Cabal doesn't behave like a typical necromancer. In my experience, he is chiefly dangerous to libraries. And zombies. And, I suppose, other necromancers,' she said, thinking of Twiccian. “He’s a bit rough on demons, too. That’s all to say that I have seen Cabal kill: but I think you would have done the same in his place, Commandant." That was true, wasn't it?

"I don't think you're lying. But Johannes Cabal might take care about what you do and don't see."

"Because he's so careful of my good opinion?" Leonie laughed, only exaggerating it a little.

"Could he be pacified, do you think?’ She seemed to be honestly consulting Leonie. "With money, for example? It's not the most savoury thing, but with a man like Cabal it might be wisest."

“I don’t think execution is ever wise. And I wouldn't presume to speak for him.' Cabal's pride would not allow even the appearance of bribery, she thought, but she wouldn't limit his choices for him. Or be drawn into profiling him for his captors' benefit. "I will tell you that he would sooner dance Swan Lake at Covent Garden than raise an army of the undead. For God's sake, he didn't even kill Jones!"

Singh poured herself another cup and topped up Leonie’s. “I admit, I assumed he had."

“He did not, and neither did I. But I will give you this insight into my psychology, Commandant; if I failed, it was not for lack of trying."

Commandant Singh added sugar to her tea. “Would you like a job?"

“Pardon me, Commandant?” She really could not keep pace. This conversation would have been taxing after a full night’s sleep and a substantial breakfast, and as it was, she really thought she had heard Singh offer her a job.

“I am quite serious. We could use you."

“And if I don’t want to be used?"

Singh tapped the drops of tea from her teaspoon and laid in on the tea tray. “As I said earlier, I’ve done some research on you. Some - perhaps most - of the information Jones had on you, he had from us.’ She watched Leonie, who only nodded. They could know a fair amount, then.

"I think you would be an asset to this corps. You’re intelligent, able-bodied, competent. You don’t freeze under pressure. You have demonstrated an ability to work with difficult people." Her voice was dry.

“You are very complimentary, ma’am.” Serious. The woman was serious.

“You’re studying criminology, and the Society could be considered police of a sort. The major barrier here is your recent association with Cabal, which, I will tell you frankly, casts doubt on your judgement and morality. I believe we should take a chance on you. I think your father’s influence will tell.

"What would you say to some minor changes in your course of study, combined with periodic training sessions at this facility? You would come to work for us as soon as your degree could be completed.’ Singh put down her cup and looked into Leonie’s eyes.

“Leonie. You already know it’s difficult for a young woman of your aptitudes and interests to find your way. I would guess you’ve considered abandoning your degree, but you don’t know what else to do. This is it. This is your chance. I can help you here, I can mentor you.

"You could do a great deal of good with us, protecting people from forces they should never have to confront. Vampires. Evil witches and mages. Criminal fae. And yes, those who use the dead for their own ends. We need people who have seen something of that sort already and haven’t run away or become corrupted."

Leonie didn’t betray any of the emotions she was feeling. “And what about Johannes Cabal?"

“What about him?"

“What do you plan to do with him? You are holding him without trial, without an advocate."

Something ironic slid into Singh’s expression. “If we’d given him a trial, you know what the result would be."

“I don’t admit the situation is that cut and dried, but I don’t propose to argue that now. What I’m trying to get at is that I was imprisoned by Jones for weeks.

"Your facility here is lovely. Very bright and elegant. But I haven’t heard anything to suggest that what he did couldn’t happen here."

Singh frowned. “It wouldn’t. We have strict regulations about the conditions in which prisoners are held. And someone like you, Leonie, would never have been brought in in the first place."

“Not for questioning about Cabal? That was Jones’ reason."

“We would have approached you differently. We are not barbarians."

“No, I see that. I see you’re principled, modern people. But where is your external oversight? You are aligned with the best interests of the crown, but do you present reports? Have you ever submitted to an external inquiry? Do you, in the end, answer to anyone but yourselves? Police can go bad like anyone else, Commandant. They can go worse than some because they have the opportunity and the power."

“I agree entirely. We should be a recognised government branch, with all the oversight that suggests. But we’re not. And that can’t happen overnight. Maybe you could be the one to make it happen, Miss Barrow."

Leonie smiled wryly. “Oh, you’re good.' She was tempted. Oh, she was tempted. Everything Mary Singh had said was correct. "What will you do if I refuse?"

"If you accept, I can release you and Cabal. You,' she looked directly at Leonie, "would need to keep him out of trouble in future, or we would require your assistance dealing with him. That would need to be absolutely understood.

"If you decline there will be no deal for Cabal. I might be able to do something for you, still. The offer would remain open."

So. Cabal stayed imprisoned until he made too much trouble or they lost hope of recruiting her. And then what? Leonie paused before she answered. “What a lovely carrot. And what a big stick you have, commandant Singh."

Singh shrugged, but her eyes were not unkind. “I did not create this situation, young woman. I am, believe it or not, trying to bring it to the best conclusion for you and for this country."

“I note you didn’t mention Cabal."

She snorted. “I cannot pretend concern for that sharp little psychopath, but I am willing to accept his freedom as a lesser evil.”

Leonie tried to imagine explaining to her self from yesterday that she was seriously considering joining the Dee Society. That it was the practical, ambitious, and perhaps even the moral choice. She could save Johannes - only for the time being, yes, but any saving of that ridiculous man was going to be temporary. She could save herself. Who knows, even Horst might get out with his skin intact at this rate.

The Society didn’t seem to be that bad, really - maybe no worse than any police or military organisation - and as Singh had suggested, she might be able to change them. And the work! It sounded good, it sounded exciting, it sounded like everything she wanted. She could work here, in this grand place, and benefit from Singh's experience and influence.

It would drive a wedge between her and Cabal, of course. Oh, he would understand why she did it. He might even approve, in his odd way. He would bid her a polite adieu - and then, she realised, he would never speak to her again. God forbid his chess strategies become common currency in the officers’ mess of the Dee Society.

And he wouldn’t be wrong; it would be the wisest thing for both of them. How long could they continue like this, after all? It was the maddest thing that their association had gone on this long, and that they hadn’t been killed or arrested. It had been dreadful. And then it had been necessary, and then it had been useful, and then it had been… fun. She swallowed an unexpected lump of emotion. But it had to end, well or badly, and this was the best ending she could picture. She could help him out of this mess, and then they would have to stop pretending to be on the same side. She would move to the Amazon basin if they tried to make her inform on Cabal, though.

Her Dad would be relieved. Would he be proud?

A memory took Leonie; for a moment, she was six years old, sitting on his lap when he came home from work. She would play with his uniform buttons and his helmet. She had traced the numbers sewn on his shoulder.

_"What are these for, Dad?"_

_“Those are my good name, Lee."_

Leonie drained her teacup. She was still thirsty, but she couldn’t postpone her answer any longer. Singh had been very, very patient, watching the shadows lengthen on the lawn. “I can’t. I’m sorry, Commandant Singh, but I can’t."

She was obviously surprised. “That is not the reply I expected.' For the first time, Singh looked miffed. “May I enquire about your reasons?"

“It is a generous offer. And I’m flattered. Really, I am.'

She felt like she owed Singh some kind of explanation. But how could she explain without giving offence? And politics aside, she did not wish to offend Singh, who she rather liked. "Before you came in, I admired that photograph. Perhaps that is your father?"

Singh jerked her chin down in a nod. “He was an operative, too. In Delhi, and then in England."

“He looks like a brave man, and a good one. Like mine.'

She chose her words carefully. "But my father wasn’t an operative, before he retired. He was a village policeman. And I learned that you have to see the people you serve at the grocer’s and at the pub. And in the courtroom, if need be. And they have to know you right back. My dad was known to almost every man and woman in Penlow, but he wore his serial number on his shoulder anyway, because he thought police have to be accountable. And I might never be - or want to be - a village policeman, but I don’t think I’m an operative, either.”

Singh nodded slowly, mollified. “Think about it. It may not be as clear a distinction as you would like. I believe I can arrange your release."

Her words snapped out, clear and firm. "Do not make me regret it. Do not make another attempt to retrieve Cabal. I will need some time now, and I regret that I must secure you in a cell. That ass of a Captain should be done antagonising Cabal by now. I will have you both moved. Look at him, Miss Barrow. And think."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a risk, this one; long, and with Cabal shoved off-screen for most of it. I hope it sustained your interest!
> 
> My apologies for any typos. I had some technical difficulties, and while I did edit, no doubt some are still lurking. 
> 
> There will be one or two final chapters.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things, _enfin_ , get real for Leonie and Cabal.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hot off the press.

_Trust that man in nothing who has not a conscience in everything.  
Tristram Shandy_

Leonie and Cabal walked down the halls of the Dee Society together. That they were surrounded by a squad of heavily armed soldiers was almost incidental. “Miss Barrow. You are unharmed."

Second Lieutenant Nailor had been given the duty of overseeing the prisoner transfer, though Leonie suspected the grim soldier with grey-streaked hair was the one actually in charge. Nailor's attention was split between glowering at Leonie and striding in front as befitted an officer. She hoped he didn't trip.

“If they can restrain themselves from smacking you around, I should be fine.' He snorted. "I see you got rid of your overall: and after all the trouble I went to. Really, Cabal."

Cabal ignored her teasing. “What do they plan to do with you?"

“Release, I’ve been told."

He was surprised. “I wonder what their game is."

“They offered me a corner office.” Leonie had a wry smile.

He came up to speed quickly. “Really. Shall I congratulate you?”

“No, I’m afraid not. I don’t think it’s going to work out. Though they did offer to release you if I accepted. Sorry."

He shrugged. "I doubt they would have followed through."

She was hardly listening to either of them. It was nattering, talk for its own sake. They were almost at the atrium. They would take the lift down to the cells, and she didn’t know if she would be able to get Cabal out again. She felt cold. “Johannes.” Her voice was low. Nailor cleared his throat in the manner of a man who did not wish to witness a private scene, but she didn’t care.

“What?” It wasn't a question as much as a protestation of her intimate form of address.

“I suggest you work with them, if you can. Get out alive. Please?”

Cabal didn’t seem to be listening. “Don’t concern yourself about that, Miss Barrow. In fact... I think I hear the hooves of the cavalry.” And distantly, Leonie heard cries.

Their squad halted at a gesture from the grizzled soldier. In the quiet, they could hear screams and, further off, gunshots.

Nailor spoke. "What do you mean by that, Mr. Cabal?"

Cabal didn't indicate he had even heard. Nailor clutched Cabal's shoulder and tried to turn him around. "Answer me, necromancer. What have you done?"

But there were sounds in the hallway ahead of them. They weren't footsteps, or at least they weren’t the sound of boots on tile. Soft slaps and clicks moved towards them in a ragged cadence.

At a second gesture from the leader, the squad boxed them in with Nailor and raised their pistols. Nailor drew his revolver. "If this is some bit of devilry meant to break you out, it won't succeed while I'm responsible for you." His voice was constricted, perhaps even close to tears, but he drew his pistol and aimed it at the back of Cabal's head. Cabal began to pay very close attention to the half-hysterical adjutant. The other soldiers aimed outwards, short barrels bristling from the tightly massed bodies.

The targets came into view. The soldiers’ bullets tore into flesh that had already bloomed blue and black with decay. The invaders' feet were exposed bone and weeping flesh which clicked and sucked at the tiles. They were the corpses of men and women: naked, shambling, loose-limbed, but not slow. One followed a little behind; he had a drier, desiccated look to him, and his movements were coordinated and aware. The stench was unbelievable.

They bullets punctured their unwholesome flesh, but they were not even slowed. The leathery one did not engage, just stood back and watched as his creatures charged the knot of soldiers. The revenants attacked with teeth, fists, and strangling hands, their bones animated with unnatural strength.

Cabal saw one of their protectors drop the Gladstone bag, and he wondered if this boy with the service revolver would mind if he armed himself with the Webley. The Webley’s more substantial bullets had been chosen for particularly this kind of work. But no: Nailor pressed his gun barrel into the base of Cabal's skull, watching his men fall, overmatched in the bloody brawl around them. The assault was quick and horrible; Leonie and Cabal could do nothing, hampered by the press of dead and dying bodies that were sodden with their own blood. Cabal regretted having been so eager to remove his overall.

Their human shield was cracking open. Nailor looked from Cabal to the monsters, steeling himself to pull the trigger. Cabal shut his eyes. They would all be dead in a moment.

Nailor swore, the oath sounding ugly and childish from his lips, and he turned the gun away from Cabal and on the monsters, punching half a dozen useless holes in them even as he was pulled into the mass screaming. Cabal had taken a bruising grip on Leonie's upper arm. She started to fight him, but it was too obvious she could do nothing alone, and it had been over almost before she moved. Nailor's shrieks were brief.

He was the last. The monsters cleared away from Nailor's savaged body, and Leonie could have wept at the young man's ruined body if she hadn't been so terrified. Cabal's hand was a manacle. The monster in back had remained aloof from the bloodshed. Its empty sockets turned towards them. Mysteriously, miraculously, the party withdrew, shambling down the hall in search of more living victims.

Cabal released her, pulled his bag and stick from under a corpse, and ran.

“Hurry,” he threw over his shoulder, and she followed, with one look back at Nailor. She wished she had a moment to compose his body, say something. But they ran until they were in the atrium. It was deserted except for a few bodies lying torn on the tile, bleeding broad swathes of red that terminated in hidden drains. A few drifted in the fountain.

Cabal was already making for the door. “Let’s go. We can walk to town or perhaps take a vehicle. Can you get out of that god-awful overall? It has Anglican all over it."

Leonie’s brain was a whirl of grief and fear and revulsion, but under it, something stirred. “The zombies."

“Twiccian’s. I hope you don’t think those revolting things were mine. I just took down a ward in exchange for a crack at their files. I don’t think it occurred to him I could find information on him here."

She was looking at him. She was looking at him as if any second she would understand what was going on here. The door… the zombies… but there had to be more to it than that. Any second now she would understand and it would be all right and….

It took twenty long seconds for Leonie’s faith in Johannes Cabal to falter, gutter, and die.

He was not going to explain it away. It was not going to be all right. The screams continued in the background.

“You did this,’ she said. “You let them in. I… I helped you let them in.” She still couldn’t believe it. Cabal valued human life, didn’t he?

He looked back at her. _And?_ A silence as broad and deep as the Grand Canyon opened up. “Come now. This is no different than blowing up the Princess Hortense. You didn’t complain about that.”

“It is. It is different, and you know it. Can you even tell when you're lying to yourself anymore?”

“Leonie, this is the Dee Society.’ He heard a cajoling note in his voice that was alien to him. “They imprisoned you. They tortured you! God knows what Jones did to you; I don’t think you’ve told me half of it. They're not worth your tears."

“Whatever Jones did,’ she grated out, “he didn't arrange for a building full of people to be slaughtered, Cabal."

He shook his head, dismissing the idea. “That won’t happen. They’re professionals, soldiers. They’ll regroup. This is just a little distraction to get us out."

“There are ten people lying in their blood right back there because of your fucking distraction, Johannes Cabal. Poor Nailor..."

"Who?"

It shouldn't enrage her that he didn't know; he'd probably never met the boy, but it felt like a deliberate insult. "Second lieutenant Nailor,' she spat. "The Commandant's adjutant. He died two yards from you."

"The officer with the gun to my head?" His eyebrows dared her to ask his sympathy. She could have struck him.

"Cabal, do you know what I have been saying about you today? 'You don't understand, Horst! He's different now.' ’ Her diaphragm heaved in a laugh or a sob. “Different. Not a monster. A bastard and a thief, perhaps, Commandant, but not a murderer.’ She ran a bloodied hand through her hair and crushed her curls in a fist. "Oh, god, this is why Horst had that look. He knew.’ She stepped close to Cabal, the rage boiling up inside her, annihilating her inhibitions. It felt wonderful. "He wanted to believe me, but he _knew_.” She screamed the last word in Cabal’s face, suddenly close as he steadied her.

She twisted out of his supporting hands. "And what are you doing helping Twiccian? How long has this been going on? I can’t believe I was so stupid.’ Her voice cracked on the word. "And I helped you do it. I didn’t even ask first.' Oh, it hurt. She had known better. You didn't blame the rabid dog, you blamed the idiot who kept it. "Horst thinks you're mad. Or, no, he thinks he's still allowed to love you if you're mad." She was crying now.

Cabal was totally at sea. He thought he must have failed to explain some part of the plan that had made it all so reasonable before. Letting a few zombies loose in the Dee Society headquarters had seemed a very good joke, two weeks ago.

“Leonie.’ He awkwardly tried to pat her shoulder, but she struck his hand away. He didn’t repeat the gesture, but he moved to catch her eye. She turned away. “I won’t deny this has gotten out of hand, but they will have weapons and procedures, safe places to wait out this sort of attack.” But his voice lacked conviction. It had been a great number of screams.

Leonie raised a hand to silence him. He did not speak. She took a few breaths, and when she spoke, she had control of her voice. She looked him dead in the eye. “I’m done, Cabal. I won’t spend a decade sitting in a tomb making excuses for you.' She knelt on the tile and unbuckled his bag. "And I won’t be your pet, your charity case that makes you feel better about about all the damage you do.’ She took the Webley and the ammunition and stowed them in the overall’s pockets.

“I didn’t know the scale of it. Truly, Leonie.” He looked dead serious. It changed nothing.

“I’m going back to help. It’s the least I can do."

Cabal snapped back. “No. Do not go back in there. I didn’t bring you here to…” _die_ , he thought.

Almost dispassionately, she replied, “you brought me here to help you endanger these people’s lives. I really have no interest in your further plans for me. Now bugger off.” Gun in hand, hair streaked with blood, she walked across the atrium towards the ragged yells and gunfire.

He stood in the Dee Society atrium, sword-stick dangling from his hand, watching Leonie Barrow’s receding back. His lips were parted and he had drawn breath, as if to call after her, call cutting or incisive words or something that would make her turn back. But she was too far away to call after now. She had turned down a hallway, she was gone. Something hurt him.

Cabal stood in the atrium like a lesser bloodstained statue. A short period of time passed while he evaluated his options: the actions he could and could not live with. The evaluation was punctured by distant gunfire and the moans of the wounded. He had no choice, not really. He released the catch on his sword-stick and started for the hall she had entered.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cabal's coat is ruined and this story ends.

The human soul is a strange thing, a scrap of ethereal fabric.  Most never distinguish the voice of their souls from the tumult of their thoughts and emotions: perhaps some few very good or bad people, as they lie awake in the dark hours, impaled on their spiritual pins like moths and butterflies.  

But these people are common compared to those who sell their souls: necromancers and sorcerers, mostly.  One wonders why Hell sets the entrance exam so high.  But other seductions and degradations ensnare the rabble; soul-selling is for those who might have been saints or geniuses if it wasn't for their equally powerful sleaziness.  But even these do not always _live_ soulless.  More usually, the payment is made at death.

Johannes Cabal was one of the few who had lived without a soul.  It isn't known if the unusual clause was his idea or Lucifer's, but he did agree to it.  He must have had his reasons.  But Cabal (and this, dear reader, is the point we have been labouring towards), Cabal might have been unique in having lived soulless and then having received his soul back again.

****

Cabal sneaked through the halls of the Dee society, looking for Leonie Barrow.  He might also have been looking for  a chance to undo some of the damage he had done.  He hadn’t really decided.

He was not an inward-looking man.  The impulse that drove him to this lifestyle was not amenable to reflection or introspection. He was a simple man.  Most of his inner life was on a single axis between satisfaction and anger.  His state drifted towards the former when he was alone in his laboratory and sprinted towards the latter when he was forced to interact with the general public.

His past held other emotions.  Happiness.  Loss.  Guilt.  His work was impelled by them, but it also helped him keep them at bay.  As he was fond of saying, he was a scientist.  He did not allow the smothering dust of sentiment on the eldritch crystal of purpose. 

Though.  Just now, he was trying to find Leonie Barrow. 

She couldn’t be more than a few minutes ahead; that’s how long he had considered leaving without her.  Well, it was  _dangerous_ to go back in.  Very dangerous. He didn’t want to be here, but here he was. 

And perhaps it was time to think about that, and why.  He wished there was an alternative.

He heard a group of undead coming and legged it into an abandoned office. The deal with Twiccian had promised him immunity, but slaughtering the revenants hadn't been part of the deal either.  You couldn't always tell which ones he was using as his eyes.

***

Everything had been very simple, once.  And then Horst had killed himself - because he just couldn’t bear his little brother any longer.  On its own, that might have given Cabal pause.

Before Horst’s ashes had settled, Satan had returned Cabal's filthy dishrag of a soul.  It was a revolting thing, but it was his, and it was his reward for a year’s uncongenial and debasing work.  

Cabal glanced down a branching hall.  He caught a glimpse of Leonie's overall disappearing behind a knot of revenants and heard her disorganized cry.  He changed direction so quickly his shoes lost purchase on the slick floor, and he fell.  He had been carrying the Gladstone and the sword-stick, and he failed to get his hands up in time.  His chin connected painfully with the tile, as did his knees.  He scrambled to his feet.  He paused to collect the sword from where he had dropped it; if it had tangled in his limbs he would have been filleted as well as bruised.  If he'd broken anything, he would find out soon enough.  He pelted after her, avoiding the slick smears of blood with more care now.  

Two of the attacking monsters were beheaded before he realised.  It wasn’t Leonie.  It was an actual cleaner, in her work overall, cramming herself as far into the corner of a doorway as she could get.  He felt a flash of exasperation, but he dutifully killed the last of the three.  He left before she had finished thanking him.  He wasn't making a bid for sainthood, after all.  Leonie would be far ahead of him now.

He checked the main office and the records room.  There was nothing happening here.  The damned place hadn’t seemed this damned large before.  Where had she taken herself?

***

After the reclamation of his soul, Cabal had done his best to go about his work exactly as before.  He violated graves and stole and filed the worse deeds under “Necessary Sacrifices (Not Mine).”  His newly returned soul put out tendrils.  It found the cracks in Cabal’s foundations: both new fractures from Horst's death and hairlines developed under years of solitary toil.  It put down tough, woody roots – for whatever it was, it was part of him, and it shared his tenacity, strength, and bloody-minded persistence.   
   
It was a strange coincidence that events had kept throwing him together with, of all people, Leonie Barrow.  A ghost.  A remarkable person.  An irritation and a surprisingly capable ally; the unknowing advocate of his conscience.  Cabal's soul, kept on short rations until now, revived.  It whispered to him.  It inclined towards Leonie like a plant to the sun, and he mistrusted her for it.  

There had been a day when Cabal had sensed, dimly, that he was becoming very accustomed to solitude.  He had a taste for it; he always had.  He liked precision, too. He liked the scientific method.  He liked tea and a fresh notebook; the reliable latch concealed in the handle of his sword-stick. Being right.  The cold silence of his hidden lab, free of all living company.  And these things had slowly turned him in upon himself.  Like the sea-creature which builds its own shell, accreting involutions upon involutions, building outward and outward until the ocean is a memory and only the chilled currents of its own breath exist.

If he had taken a moment to sort through his library of a brain and consider his colleagues, he would have realised that a necromancer with no need for companionship, for human contact, will inevitably go mad.  

The day he glimpsed the twitchy seclusion of Arthur Twiccian in his future, he sent Leonie the opening move in a chess game.  He slept easier, and he had more spirit for his work.  When it seemed necessary, he was willing to exchange things that were dear to him - his time, his privacy, his limited tolerance for humanity - for her safety and wellbeing. Leonie's talk of being friends had baffled him at first.  Surely they were oil and water?  Wasn’t spending time together the purest torture?  But on reflection, it had not been.  He had liked it.  Liked her acuity and her lack of self-importance, even liked her sunny disregard for his complaints.  He felt queasy.

Passing behind the security office he heard sounds echoing down the corridor.  It led him into a wing of the structure he hadn't entered before.  The groans and shouts, still without a visible source but louder, were from the living; the monsters were silent, had not, in fact, uttered a single sound in his hearing.  The hallway was littered with bodies.  They were mostly human. 

Arthur Twiccian had sent Hell to the Dee Society.  Cabal thought how it would look to Leonie's eyes, and he actually winced.  A field of waste and carnage. 

A few dreadful things lay among the humans.  Cabal inspected the monsters’ death-wounds.  In addition to that old standby, beheading, massive cranial trauma did the trick.

And without warning, a revenant was on him, bowling him over from his crouch over the corpse. He added ‘surprisingly stealthy’ to the list of attributes he was building in his brain, and pried its gaping face away before it could lock its teeth in his neck.  It had been a burly red-haired man once, like a butcher from a music-hall act.  Its four-day stubble scraped at Cabal’s hand as he fended it off, but it hugged him close.  The stench was suffocating at this proximity.  Cabal got his shoulder between his neck and the creature’s jaws. 

Swords are perfectly good weapons against unarmed opponents, unless the unarmed opponent has locked strong arms around you and is worrying its way through the shoulder of your frock coat.  It was a good thing human teeth were so rubbish at slicing. 

Cabal struggled under the weight of the thing.  While he was keeping it away from his face and neck, it was starting to be very successful with the fabric of his coat.  He had to get the sword from his right hand, which was pinned beneath the monster, to his left hand.

Cabal shouted as it finally tore the fabric open.  It ground its teeth into his bare flesh, tearing the skin and mangling the meat beneath.  The pain was tremendous.  Trusting that the monster was enjoying itself enough for a moment’s distraction, Cabal released his hold on the head long enough to get his left arm around its shoulders and pluck the hilt of the sword from his right hand.  

After a messy and painful interval, the monster was headless. Cabal would have given worlds for a bath.  

***

Now what had he been thinking?  Oh yes.  Playing chess.  Just when he had returned to a sort of equilibrium, rationing out little doses of companionship and enjoying their games, something catastrophic had happened.  Leonie been abducted by his enemies: she had protected his secrets. Not only had she endured physical and emotional insult, she had made a rude gesture at the inquisitor for good measure.  If his most misanthropic and suspicious self could have designed a test...

And so he couldn't help it.  She became real to him; not just a face that still sometimes made his stomach clench; not just a trial to his patience and an obstacle to his plans; not just a calm head and a safe back in a fight; not even, at last, simply the one self-indulgence he allowed himself, i.e. a game of chess by mail and a familiar bout of insulting repartee.  When she protected his work, she became Leonie Abigail Barrow, and he owed her.  In a world of self-described _people_ who were generally, as far as Cabal was concerned, no more than obstacles and shadows, she was the first company he'd had since Horst killed himself.  

A shape on the floor caught his eye.  A fallen soldier lay beside a more substantial weapon than his fallen comrades'.  It was a large, lumpen sort of gun caught between handgun and rifle.  It was of an insufficiently preposterous caliber for Cabal's taste, but it did take a magazine.  He counted bullets. 

He felt happier with the mongrel armament in one hand and the Gladstone with his stick strapped to it in the other.  This was starting to feel like a quest rather than a suicide mission.  At the next turn of the hall he found several revenants and he tested the gun on them; best to know now if it pulled to the left or jammed every few shots.  Two zombies went down, with a little work.  He patted it in satisfaction.  

***

Oh, he had known Leonie would be furious if she found out about the deal he had made with Twiccian.  He had meant them to be gone before the madman’s creatures used the door.  When that failed, he’d braced himself for a hellstorm of insults and recriminations.

But he had never doubted she would stay.  How would she scold and complain, otherwise?  Horst would have.  Cabal had not understood the numbers Twiccian would send, the power of his servitors, the carnage that would ensue!  He had pictured skeletons, or a half-dozen zombies.  

And... if it had occurred to him that Twiccian might send a larger force after the Dee Society, he had not much cared.  They had no claim on his mercy, did they?  The very existence of Johannes Cabal’s mercy was a closely guarded secret, and it was certainly none of their business.  He had pictured them as outgrowths of Jones, and a little cleansing fire had seemed like just the thing.  Cabal found a zombie separated from its party and beheaded it with the sword, for variety's sake and to conserve bullets, while contemplating that.  

Additionally: when Leonie had said she was "done," what did that mean, and how long would it last?  She had threatened to leave before, but she had never actually left. Did she expect an apology?  He mulled it over as he stepped over torn and bloody bodies, cast to the floor like discarded meat.  

It was a mystery to him how he had inspired Leonie's trust in the first place.  Before today, he would have sworn she had very few illusions about J. Cabal, Esq.  What had gotten into her?  In the relative privacy of his own skull he was willing to admit to himself that he and Leonie had become...  That he thought of her as….  

His stomach twisted.  Well, perhaps he was not willing.  But even given - _that thing he was not admitting_ \- he had to admit he had never considered their association from her point of view.  She had fit into Horst's place, and he had taken that for granted.  Horst had killed himself to get away from Johannes, and, it occurred to him now, even that hadn't worked.  

Cabal felt nauseated.  It was not the blood and other revolting liquids soaking his coat, or the corpses, or even the putrid smell of the invaders.  It was partly that this was the most time he had spent thinking about himself in years.  But it was partly what he had found: in his most secret self, before his own soul and Charles Darwin, he did not like having disappointed Leonie so deeply.

He heard a tumult of voices and gunfire ahead; this must be where the society was making its stand.  He would find Leonie, and she would see that he had come back.  

****

Leonie had been lucky; she’d only had one close call as she worked her way toward the source of the cries, and the Webley had been more than effective.  The effects were messy if one was standing too close, but the survivors were grateful, if queasy. 

They had led her to the mess hall, where humans and monsters fought around a barricade of tables and counters.  The barricade formed a corridor that was defended by soldiers while a mixed group of officers and civilians helped the wounded through a vaultlike door.  No-one challenged her as she entered; breathing was security clearance enough.  Singh’s voice came clear over the tumult.  “Shore up the north side, Lieutenant.  There’s a pair of them trying… good man.  Gather everyone in, no triage here.  MacAdams!  Pull yourself together. If you must vomit, do it where no-one will slip in it, for Christ’s sake."

She stopped when she saw Leonie; her shoulders sagged a fraction of an inch in an effusive show of relief.  She looked Leonie over, her eyes pausing on the bloody gash along the side of her head.  It was already clotting, so Singh dismissed it  “Cabal?” she asked.  

“Gone, I think.’  Leonie remembered the blank silence behind her as she walked away.  “I imagine he’s saving his skin just now.  I’m armed,’ she said, hefting the Webley.  “What can I do to help?"

“Well done,’ said Singh.  “Join the civilians helping the wounded to the bunker.  You may make sorties to bring in them in if you think it’s necessary.  Watch your back, and don’t get surrounded."

Leonie nodded, and Singh gave her a half-smile that put an eager warmth in Leonie’s stomach.  She would do her best.

It was bad, at the end of the barricade.  The soldiers there were more heavily armed, but the monsters, foiled elsewhere by the barrier, were concentrating their attacks.  Leonie saw a limping soldier being supported down the hall by a clerk, trying to make it to her position.  Two revenants were moving up behind them, and Leonie didn’t have a clear shot.  She glanced the other way; the hall was empty. 

She left the barricade in a rush, crossed the hall, raised Cabal’s gun, exhaled, and dropped the first revenant to the ground.  The second bullet went over the other one's head; she cursed - Cabal hadn’t brought much ammunition; the huge bullets for the Webley were prohibitively heavy.  She moved further down the corridor.  The survivors were nearly at the barricade now, and the zombie presented a much larger target; her second bullet took it in the temple.  It fell ten yards from her feet.  

She heard a voice.  “The Webley Boxer does tend to kick up.  It’s best to aim a little low, if anything.”   She took a step or two forward.  There he was, around the corner.  He had been chewed, but not seriously, and he leaned his shoulders against the wall like he hadn't a care in the world.  They were alone, for the moment.  

“I know."

He saw her bloody head; he abandoned his nonchalant pose to get a better look.  “You’re hurt."

“I know that, too.  What are you doing here?’  He had found one of the guns the barricade guards were using.  He had followed her down here?  She let her fatigue show.  She really didn’t have the time or patience for this right now.  Cabal paused.  He cleared his throat.  She hurried him along.  “I don’t have all day.  If you have something to say, say it."

“It has occurred to me that you may…’  he searched for words.  Leonie took a breath, for patience.  “You may have had some justice on your side.  I acted rashly."

She could have laughed.  “So, you’ve had an epiphany?” she asked politely.  Did he want praise for deciding that being acessory to a slaughter had been "rash"?

“Of sorts."

"How lovely for you.’ The acid dripped into her tone.  "Too bad all those people are still dead.”  Bloody Cabal.  She was exhausted. A slow drop of blood fell from her ear to her shoulder.

“Well… yes.”  He put his hands in his pockets.

He was, sort of, trying.  She didn’t know whether to be insulted or to pity him.  She took advantage of the pause to reload the empty chambers of the Webley. "I know you think that admission is significant, Cabal.  But it isn't.’  She sorted out her thoughts.  These would probably be her last words to Johannes Cabal, and if she owed him anything, she would pay her last debt by giving him the truth.

"The question isn’t whether you can recognize when you’re being an asshole, because I know you can.  You just choose not to.  The question is whether you’re willing to do a damn thing about it.’  Her voice was matter-of-fact.  “And you aren’t.  Why would you?  It’s easier for you this way.  And we let you.’  The Webley felt like it was made of lead, too.  She wanted to get into the bunker and pass out, but they would probably have their hands full with the wounded for the rest of the night.

"Don't write,’ she continued.  Cabal’s face shadowed as she checked the gun.  “And I trust you can see yourself out.  If there's anyone less fond of you than Twiccian, it's the surviving members of this lot."

He felt a pressure in his throat, and his face burned.  Words were trying to claw their way out.  He swallowed them and fell back on old habits.  “Are you getting that corner office after all?’  He tossed it at her, hoping it would sting.  "I had no idea you were ambitious, Miss Barrow.  You certainly hid that well.’   She looked at him expressionlessly and then turned to go. He called after her: "I hope your new associates do not disappoint you.”  She shook her head, but she didn’t break stride.  And she turned the corner towards the barricade.

***

The soldiers retreated.  Cabal watched from hiding.  The remaining revenants should be no serious barrier to the defenders once they had time to regroup.  He had faith that the Dee Society’s bunker was well-supplied with bandages and ammunition.  

Leonie walked into the vault without looking back.  It closed with a deep clang. The commandant would protect her. 

And he had come all this way for _nothing._

Cabal stepped out from his protected position.  He was bloody and tattered and flecked with bits of putrid corpse, but his back was straight and his voice had a biting edge.  He shouted to reach any undead that might be nearby.  “Are you listening, Twiccian?  You seedy excuse for an occult practitioner?  I’m going to come and push your _abstoßendes_ ittle face in, do you hear?  You bottom-feeding disgrace, _Sie schmieriger Aasgeier_." Full of anger with no object, he picked up a stool and hurled it at an office window.  “Damn you,’ he snarled. "I know you’re listening somewhere.'

He had been so certain when he left home that this was a brilliant move; the Dee Society distracted, the key to Twiccian’s downfall in his hands.  But no, he had been a blind child.  He punctuated the thought by kicking a loose arm to the side as he started back toward the entrance. He had been a step behind the Society and two steps behind Twiccian at every turn.  He had been captured and used as a tool, and if he ever got out of here, Arthur sodding Twiccian would know a thing or two about it.  His anger almost drowned out the pain.

The undead had heard him, of course.  

He heard them coming up behind him.  He didn’t care, of course, but now his shoulder had reopened and he was remembering just how far from safety he was.  Even if he made it outdoors, it was night and there was nothing to discourage Twiccian from pursuing him right to the edge of town.  The mathematics of his remaining bullets and the number of revenants reached through Cabal’s rage, and he realised that Arthur Twiccian might be sleeping in peace for some time.  

His shoulder stung and burned.  His blood had soaked through the shirt under his coat, mingling with the other blood he was bathed in.  His sweat ran into his eyes, and he wiped it away with a blood-soaked sleeve, leaving a pink smudge of his blood, or a stranger's. 

He held the first wave off with the gun; it took several bullets to mash the brain to death.  He made sure each one was down before he went to the next.  He had to aim lower than usual; he was too used to the Webley.  The last magazine emptied.  He had been giving ground slowly, hoping to thin out the numbers and make his way back to the atrium.  

And then he heard them in that direction, too.  

A monster came for him; he beheaded it, with effort.  His shoulder was swelling, and it limited his range of movement. 

Two more came; he kicked one away and beheaded the other.  He was glad he hadn’t abandoned his coat.  He would burn it if he got out alive, but the thick fabric might win him extra seconds again.  Three came.  Another started to circle at a distance.  He had to move before they swamped him, but there were too many of them already.  

He wondered if he should call out; if there were any last words.  But there was no-one to hear them but Arthur Twiccian, no doubt watching from the eyes of one of the laggards in back.  

This was not the most dignified death, but you took the one you got.   _And maybe she’d be sorry then_.  And immediately he was ashamed of the thought.  She would be, and that was something else to regret.

"Horst,' he called out.  "Where the hell are y-."

There was no warning.  Only after your eyes registered him did you imagine you had seen a blur.  His fangs were bared, white and sharp, and he had a smear of blood on his chin.  His hair tumbled over his brow in locks and strings and his hands were red.  He was a picture of vampiric rage and power dressed in a natty brown suit.  The revenants did not register emotion, but they leaned back a little and made no attempt to touch him.  

The zombies threatening Cabal were struck away so forcefully that parts of them remained behind.  Cabal, no stranger to decomposition, shut his mouth on a retch when the fine spray hit his face and lips.  

A few loped towards them, but Horst turned with a fanged snarl; they demonstrated a glimmer of sentience by receding.  

Cabal spoke up.  “Where the hell were you?  You’ve never understood punctuality.  I expected you ages ago."

"Where's Leonie?"  Horst's voice was distorted by the fangs.

Cabal considered his vest.  It should probably be burned, too, but it wasn’t as immediately repulsive as the coat.  “Don’t waste your time."

“What?"

“Miss Barrow is quite safe.  And she’s not coming.”  There was something opaque about Cabal’s tone.

Horst’s speed was vampiric, but sometimes it took a very human amount of time for ideas to penetrate.  His fangs became less evident.  Could vampires go pale?  They could certainly look horrified.  “I… I didn’t smell her blood.  Not much, at least.  Where is she, then? And dear god, Johannes, what is going on here?  But no, where is Leonie?"

"Leonie is safe, I think.  I don't want to talk about it.'  He stripped off his vile coat and dropped it to the floor.  Let them find it.  Let them wonder where he was.  “Let’s go before the puppeteer has time to regroup."

Horst was troubled, but he didn’t argue.  And Cabal was once again raised in his brother's arms and carried away faster than the eye could see.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please join me for the (one hopes) thrilling conclusion of Friendship is Unnecessary, starting - maybe - in March.
> 
> Many thanks to All_I_Need, who considers the finer points of vultures versus asskissers versus lumps of puke in the field of Caballesque invective.


End file.
